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Monday, 08 September, 2008, 17:50 GMT | more prices >>

Tehran waits on Pars LNG choice



By Upstream staff 

Iran expects France's Total to make a final decision on the South Pars liquefied natural gas project within three to four months, National Iranian Oil Company boss Gholam Hossein Nozari said today.

"We are looking at ways to reduce costs," Nozari told Reuters.

Earlier this month, Iran said it was still in talks with Total over the South Pars project, the country's first LNG export terminal.

Nozari said that Total's cost estimate for the South Pars project was around $10 billion.

He also said that 11 companies, including some from Asia and Europe, such as Spain's Repsol, had shown interest in an oil and gas exploration tender.

"We have 11 companies that have bought a total of 45 document packages for the blocks on offer," he told reporters.

Nozari said he expected Iran to award the tender for the 17 onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration blocks by the end of June.

Iran is attempting to lure international oil and gas companies to invest despite rising pressure from the US and the United Nations over its nuclear ambitions.

Nozari said that Iran's oil output was currently around 4 million barrels per day and that capacity stood at 4.26 million bpd but that it planned to boost crude output capacity to 5.3 million bpd by 2015.

Iran was also looking at ways to improve the recovery ratio from existing fields to help increase output, he said.

Each extra 1% of oil that it could recover would add 6 billion barrels to Iran's recoverable reserves.


Monday, 16 April, 2007, 06:45 GMT  | last updated: Monday, 16 April, 2007, 07:32 GMT

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