DUBAI: Iran expects to draw up new framework agreements within six months, including oil production sharing contracts (PSCs), to lure foreign energy investors back, oil ministry news website Shana said yesterday.
Iran’s insistence on paying contractors in oil for projects they had to hand over when completed made big jobs unattractive to foreign investors before Western sanctions made it nearly impossible to work there.
In a bid to revive a decaying energy sector, Iranian oil officials working under the former oil minister began offering more attractive production sharing deals to Indian companies in early 2013.
Shortly after taking office in August, new oil minister Bijan Zanganeh ordered a widespread review, saying the contracts seemed particularly unsuitable for enhanced oil recovery projects (EOR) that Iran needs to revive tired old fields.
“Production from hydrocarbon fields within the framework of buy-back contracts drops after the project is given to the contractor,” Gholam-Reza Manouchehri, a member of the committee charged with revising the contracts was quoted by Shana as saying.
Reuters
