Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 26
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Indonesia plans to join Iran’s permanent oil customers, Darmin Nasution, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for economic affairs, said.
Nasution made the remarks during a meeting with Mahmoud Vaezi, Iran’s ICT minister, who is also co-chairman of Iran-Indonesia Joint Economic Cooperation Commission in Tehran Feb. 26, IRNA news agency reported.
Indonesia has recently received a one-million-barrel oil cargo from Iran to test if the oil specifications conforms the Indonesian refineries, he said.
Each oil refinery is designed for a specific type of oil and can’t process other types. For changing the feedstock, the refinery should be re-designed and its equipments must be changed.
If the Indonesian refineries are able to refine the Iranian oil, Indonesia will continue crude oil purchase from the Islamic Republic, Nasution said.
The Indonesian minister also invited Iran to construct oil refineries in the country.
The two parties also negotiated the issue of Iran’s gas export to the Asian country.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in Tehran in December 2016 that his country will import liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Iran in the near feature, adding that the two parties agreed on purchase of over 500,000 tons of LPG from Iran in 2017.
Nasution further touched upon the issue of cooperation between National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Indonesia’s Pertamina for oil extraction from Iranian oil fields of Ab-Teymour and Mansouri, saying Indonesia can extract 200,000 barrels of oil from the two fields per day.
NIOC and Pertamina signed a deal last August for development studies of the two fields.
Ab-Teymour and Mansouri are two oil fields situated in the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan.
Heading a high-ranking economic delegation Nasution arrived in Tehran Feb. 26 to follow up the negotiations on cooperation in the fields of oil, gas, petrochemical and electricity with Iranian officials.
The Indonesian delegation is scheduled to hold talks with Iranian officials in the fields of trade, banking, agriculture and industrial engineering as well.
During the visit to Tehran, the Indonesian delegation is to follow up agreements reached during the visit by President Joko Widodo to Iran last December as well as approvals of the 12th joint economic commission meeting.