Iranian oil ministry to start reforming contracts

The Iranian Oil ministry plans to start revising the structure of oil contracts as of next week in order to enhance recovery and facilitate attraction of foreign and domestic investments, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said. Zanganeh said close link among the various stages of oil operations from exploration to development and creating attractive conditions for domestic and foreigner contractors are among the reasons behind reforming contracts. "Those exploration contacts that were concluded in recent years having faults in their structure and needs revision," Zanaganeh said. "During the first meeting with parliament’s energy commission members we discussed updating oil contracts; therefore the Oil Ministry will try to reform the structure of contracts through cooperation with the government and parliament," he continued. Iran’s oil fields are mature so oil contracts should be enough attractive for NIOC and contractors, Minister of Petroleum said. The minister added, "Part of the future projects will be enhancing recovery rate projects which will be implemented in Iran’s mature oil and fields and I have decided to put implementation of more than ten such projects on the agenda." Earlier Iranian minister of petroleum stated that reforming oil contracts is a necessity. He demanded legal experts to do so by inviting famed domestic and foreign companies for cooperation. During his tenure as Petroleum Minister from 1997 to 2005, Zanaganeh succeeded to attract many investors to Iran’s upstream activities through offering new terms which included signing about 40 buyback contracts worth more than 30 billion dollars.