Baku, Azerbaijan, March 5
By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:
An Iranian senior oil official has denied that the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed oil agreements with Shell and the British Petroleum.
"So far, National Iranian Oil Company has only reached an agreement with French Total," Mehr news agency quoted Mohsen Qamsari, director of international affairs at NIOC, as saying March 4.
"We have not so far signed any agreement on crude sale with Shell, the British Petroleum or any other European major company," he added.
Elaborating on the failure to reach agreements with European oil companies, Qamsari said the European giants are very selective and meticulous regarding the deals.
He further added that Iran currently is in talks with several leading oil companies and expressed hope that the country will achieve better results in the new rounds of talks with oil companies.
According to him, following the economic decline in China, NIOC plans to gain new market share in Eastern Europe and keep its traditional customers in Asia and Europe.
Qamsari also said the countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, France, Italy, Spain and India are among Iran's traditional customers.
He has recently described the Eastern European countries' oil markets as Iran's most important target in the post-sanctions era.
By holding 157.8 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves, Iran possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of crude oil. The Islamic Republic also holds 34 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves, sharing 18.2 percent of total global gas reserves.
According to a recent report by OPEC, Iran's oil production in January was estimated to be around 2.925 million barrels per day, of which about 1.3 million barrels were exported.