Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 15
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iranian manufacturers are capable of building drilling rigs which cost 600 trillion rials which is about $24 million based on the U.S. dollar official exchange rate of 24,900 rials, less than importing its Chinese-made equivalent, IRNA quoted Iranian MP Amir Abbas Soltani as saying.
Each Chinese-made drilling rig is imported at 1700 trillion rials, while building the same rig domestically at a higher quality costs 1100 trillion rials, he noted.
It seems the agreement signed last year with Jahad-e Daneshgahi to build 14 drilling rigs domestically has been annulled, he added.
Some brokers and profiteers easily circumvent the law to support domestic production and import Chinese -made drilling rigs just for the sake of more profit, he said.
Over two years ago on July 19, 2011, Iran's oil ministry website quoted Deputy Oil Minister Hamdollah Mohammadnejad as saying the country had reached self-sufficiency in building onshore drilling rigs.
At that time, Mohammadnejad said that five domestic companies were manufacturing onshore drilling rigs through reverse engineering and indigenizing the required technology.
Hedayatollah Khademi, the managing director of the North Drilling Company, which is a contractor for building the rigs, said he was completely unaware of the contract between the oil ministry and the Jahad-e Daneshgahi for building 14 drilling rigs.
He added the oil ministry had sent him a letter requesting his company buy four of the rigs and the National Drilling Company buy 10.
"There is no factory in Iran which can build drilling rigs. We signed deals with some domestic companies to build the rigs. However, they transferred the deal to other companies and eventually a Chinese company built the rigs and the Iranian company which had signed the deal with us imported them from the Chinese company and sold to us under the name of domestically-made rigs, he explained.