TEHRAN: Forty American, European, and Asian firms have announced their willingness to invest in Iran’s gas industry, according to an official with the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) here the other day.
Companies from South Korea, Japan, Russia, Italy, England, France, and Canada are negotiating with the NIGC to make investment in Iran’s gas projects, Asghar Soheilipour, the chairman of NIGC investment committee, said on Tuesday.
A French company has already started implementing a gas project in Iran, he said, adding that the project will come on stream in the next Iranian calendar year (starting on March 21, 2015).
Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Ali Tayyebnia has said that potential trading partners can rest easy about the investment environment in Iran despite sanctions pressure.
Some of Iran’s trading partners have shied away from doing business with the Islamic republic because of sanctions.
There should be no apprehension about trading with Iran, he stressed.
“Iran is among the safest countries for (foreign) investment,” he said.
On January 1, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the country plans to pump up natural gas production at South Pars gas field to 100 million cubic meters (mcm) per day by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2015).
Iran has the world’s biggest reserves of natural gas, with an estimated 33.7 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, and the world’s fourth-biggest reserves of oil, with 157 billion barrels, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, which was published in June 2014.
