Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Oman's Oil Company wants to invest in refinery projects in Iran, Isam Bin Saud Al Zadjali, the managing director of the company said.
He referred to the recent meeting of Iran 's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh with his Omani counterpart Mohammed al Rumhy in Tehran, saying the meeting provided the Omani side with the opportunity to become familiar with Iranian oil and gas companies.
" Iran has offered us presence in refinery projects and we are studying the investment capacities," Al Zadjali said, the Iranian oil ministry's official SHANA news agency reported Sept. 23.
Oman is interested in participating in the Siraf refinery complex project in the coastal city of Assaluyeh near the South Pars offshore gas field, Al Zadjali said.
" Iran provided us information about the project and Iranian companies which are running the project are seeking foreign partners," he added.
Iran plans to process condensate- a light oil extracted along with natural gas- into exportable products at the Siraf refining units. The project is to be completed in three years. It was earlier announced that private Iranian companies would use their own funds to build eight processing plants, each with a capacity of 60,000 barrels a day.
Iranian and Omani oil ministers discussed cooperation in selling oil products as well as in the field of development of oil and gas projects in their meeting on Sept. 21.
Construction of the Iran-Oman gas pipeline was part of the negotiations as well and the two sides underlined speeding up the project. The contract for the feasibility study of the gas pipeline was signed with Iranian companies during the visit of Omani minister to Tehran. Oman and Iran agreed in 2013 to construct a gas pipeline to export around 28 Million cubic meters of gas from Iran to Oman for 15 years.
The two countries also share an oil-gas field in the Persian Gulf, named Hengam. Iran currently extracts around 20,000 barrels per day of oil from the Hengam field, and Oman extracts half of that. The two countries have disputed over their shares of the field. Iran says 80 percent of the field is located within its territorial waters.
According to Iran 's estimation, the field holds about 700 million barrels of oil and 56 billion cubic meters of gas. Iran plans to establish facilities to collect 2.2 million cubic meters of associate petroleum gas per day from the field.
Edited by CN
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