Speaking out: Seiffolah Jashnsaz
'Iran needs foreign cash injection'
Iran will need foreign capital if it is to meet its plans to invest up to $30 billion a year in its oil sector, a senior oil official was quoted as saying.
"The available information indicates that the use of internal resources does not meet investment needs," the daily Resalat quoted Seiffolah Jashnsaz, managing director of state-run National Iranian Oil Company, as saying at a conference. "We must seek foreign investments."
US trade and economic sanctions bar investment in Iran's oil sector because of what the West insists is a programme to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran says its nuclear programme is aimed at producing electricity, a Reuters report said.
Jashnsaz said the Islamic state needed to increase investment in the oil sector to maintain until around 2025 its status within Opec.
Iran would have to invest $25 billion to 3$0 billion annually in its oil and gas sector, he said.
Iran's income from the export of crude oil in the Iranian year to 21 March was $75 billion of which around $10 billion was used to develop the oil and gas sector, Reuters quoted Jashnsaz as saying.
"Some $10 billion was invested in the oil and gas sector last year which amounted to a record in the past 30 years," said Jashnsaz, who is also a deputy oil minister.
But the $10 billion was less than half of the needed investment and of the $10 billion less than $1 billion came from foreign sources.