Pushing ahead: Iran
Iran lines up Russian deals
Iran's oil ministry said it was in talks with a Russian oil company to develop three oilfields in the Islamic state, according to reports.
Iran, the world's fifth-largest crude exporter, has struggled to attract the money and technology to develop its oil and gas fields as international sanctions and political pressures have kept foreign companies away.
"We are negotiating with ... a Russian company to develop the three oil fields in southwestern Iran," the semi-official Mehr news agency cited managing director of Iran's Central Oilfields Company, Alireza Zeighami, as saying, according to a Reuters report.
Zeighami said a consortium made up of an Iranian company and the Russian company would carry out development of the oilfields if talks succeeded.
"The Iranian company has submitted a proposal for early production which is under study," Zeighami said without elaborating.
Zeighami said an output of 8000 barrels per day was estimated in the first phase of the plan for the three fields and there are plans to raise it to 20,000 bpd in the second phase.
Iranian oil officials have said the country's energy industry needed some $200 billion investment in new oil, gas and petrochemical projects by 2015.
Some Asian companies, less susceptible to Western political pressure, have signed numerous memorandums of understanding for oil and gas projects, many of which have yet to be finalised.