Ready to spend: says NIOC managing director Seifollah Jashnsaz
Iran plans $70bn spending spree
Iran plans to invest around $70 billion in two major offshore natural gas fields in the 2010-2015 period, a senior official said today.
Seifollah Jashnsaz, managing director of the state National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said Iran would invest $40 billion to complete remaining projects in the South Pars field during the fifth five-year economic plan, which runs until 2015.
He did not say how Iran would pay for the work.
Iran has increasingly turned to Asia, which in some cases still has available cash to invest and whose energy demand is expected to outpace that in the developed world.
Another Iranian official, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, told Reuters on Monday Iran is in talks with Asian banks on a €1 billion ($1.40 billion) bond to finance the development of South Pars, as part of its pursuit of billions of energy sector funding.
South Pars, the world's largest reservoir of gas, is shared by Iran and Qatar.
The Iranian part is divided into 24 phases.
A further $25 billion would be invested in the North Pars field, Jashnsaz said.
"Altogether it looks like ... Iran will invest some $70 billion in these two fields which is a very high figure and no other field in the country is expected to have such high investment," Reuters quoted Jashnsaz as saying on state television.
He did not explain the difference between the $70 billion figure and the total of $65 billion which he said would be invested in the two fields.
In May, an Iranian state company said Iran planned to issue $12.3 billion of foreign currency and rial-denominated bonds over the next three years to help finance South Pars.
In all, Iran's five-year energy sector investment plan required investment totalling around $30 billion per year, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, vice president of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, told Reuters in an interview earlier this year.