A senior Iranian oil official has announced that the country intends to spend US$70 billion on the development of two offshore gas fields between 2010-2015.
Seifollah Jashnsaz, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) told a state television channel that the money would be spent on the development of the huge North and South Pars gas fields.
“Altogether it looks like … Iran will invest some $70 billion in these two fields which is a very high figure and no other field in the country is expected to have such high investment,” Jashnsaz said in comments published by Reuters. .
The official said $40 billion of the money would be spent on the South Pars field while $25 billion would be spent developing North Pars.
Jashnsaz did not disclose where the $70 billion of funding would come from, nor did he say where the additional $5 billion would be spent.
The South Pars gas field is shared with neighbouring Qatar and has the largest reserves of natural gas in the world.
Despite having lower gas reserves that Iran, Qatar is viewed as a much safer bet by Western nations and as a result the country has established itself as the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world.
Qatar has invested billions of dollars in first class facilities to both extract, process and ship the gas. Iran has struggled to find investment from overseas to exploit its vast gas reserves due to economic sanctions brought about by the country’s nuclear developments.
