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Mubadala bids for Iran gas as Crescent deal stalls

Iran Materials 17 August 2009 11:11 (UTC +04:00)

The UAE-based Mubadala Petroleum Services Company has offered a bid to import Iranian gas as the National Iranian Oil Company-Crescent National Gas Corporation deal has hit a standstill, the Mehr News Agency reported on Sunday.

NIOC and Mubadala have reached a preliminary agreement, the report says, adding Iran will start to deliver up to 10 million cubic meters of gas per day to the Emirati company some three years after finalizing the agreement.

This volume of gas will be transferred for a period of 25 years through a subsea pipeline.

While Iran and Crescent National Gas Corporation have not come to terms on the gas transfer conditions, three other Emirati companies have announced readiness to buy Iran''s Salman field natural gas.

Crescent has recently decided to seek international arbitration for what it called the failure of Iran's state oil firm to fulfill the gas export contract.

This is while Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that the NIOC-Crescent deal will be enforceable only if it serves Iran's national interests.

Crescent National Gas Corp. signed a deal with the NIOC in 2001 to import natural gas from Iran's Salman field through a pipeline that was supposed to be built jointly by NIOC and Crescent.

Based on the deal, NIOC was supposed to export 17 million cubic meters (600 million cubic feet) of gas daily to the UAE for 25 years starting in 2005.

As oil rallied in following years, some officials and politicians in Iran called for a revision to the price formula. They have blamed the price dispute for the delay.

Crescent says the two sides provisionally agreed on a revised price in September last year, but that it has heard nothing from NIOC on the price since then.

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