Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 4/ Trend R.Zamanov
Iran and Oman have reached an agreement whereby Muscat will become Tehran's marketing centre for selling gas to the region, the Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zaganeh said on Sunday.
"Negotiations with Oman have gone very well and we have completely agreed on fundamental issues," the ISNA News Agency quoted Zanganeh as saying.
He made the remarks at a press conference during the 15th ministerial meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Tehran.
"A contract will be signed by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2014), or at the beginning of next year," Zanganeh said.
He went on to note that the two sides have not agreed on the gas price yet.
The 15th ministerial meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) began on November 3, in Iran's capital city of Tehran, ISNA news agency reported.
GECF`s financial and administrative issues as well as the budget for 2014 are scheduled to be discussed.
The forum is a multi-layered and intergovernmental organisation of the world's leading natural gas producers comprising Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Kazakhstan, Iraq, the Netherlands and Norway have the status of observer members.
The first GECF summit meeting was held in the Qatari capital of Doha on November 15, 2011.
The GECF was founded in 2001 in Tehran and its member states control over 70 per cent of the world's natural gas reserves as well as more than 80 per cent of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production.
The legal establishment of the forum took place on December 2008 in Moscow, where energy ministers of the member states adopted the forum's charter and signed an intergovernmental agreement.
Tehran will also host the third summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). The second summit was held in Moscow in July.