Russia is planning to expand economic cooperation with Iran in the oil and gas industry to ensure sustainable economic development, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said after meeting his Iranian counterpart who is on an official visit to Moscow.
Russia sees “a great potential for enhanced oil and gas industry cooperation,” Putin said at a joint news conference which followed the meeting of the two leaders, according to media reports. He added that “leading Russian companies have reached a number of important agreements concerning the development of major hydrocarbon deposits in Iran.”
On the sidelines of Hassan Rouhani’s Moscow trip, Russia’s top natural gas producer Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) have signed a memorandum of cooperation in the gas sector, with a particular emphasis on the Russian company’s participation in the development of oil and gas fields in the Islamic Republic.
Putin and Rouhani also agreed to continue cooperation aimed at stabilising the global energy market and ensuring sustainable economic development.
The two sides have “welcomed the agreements reached by OPEC members and other oil-producing countries, which contribute to the balancing of supply and demand at the [global] oil market within the acceptable price range,” read the joint communiqué signed by the two presidents.
In December last year, eleven non-OPEC oil-producing countries agreed to decrease oil production by 558,000 barrels per day in total. Russia pledged to shrink its oil production by 300,000 barrels per day alone. Several weeks earlier, OPEC members further agreed to decrease their oil production by 1.2mn barrels per day.
Russia and Iran have also agreed to continue their cooperation within the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GESF) aimed at building a mechanism for a more meaningful dialogue between gas producers and gas consumers for the sake of stability and security of supply and demand in global natural gas markets.
