The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed on Monday a memorandum of understanding with a consortium that includes Japan's engineering group Toyo to revamp the facilities and upgrade gas production at the Salman field in the Persian Gulf.
Iranian company Petropars is also part of the consortium, Iran's oil ministry's news service, Shana, reported.
Under the memorandum of understanding, NIOC, Petropars, and Toyo will finance studies for the rehabilitation project, but if they decide to turn the MoU into a deal, it would be an Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Finance (EPCF) contract, with the Japanese firm financing the project, Shana quoted Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy for development and engineering at NIOC, as saying.
According to Oil & Gas Journal, the Salman oil and gas field that straddles the Iranian-UAE maritime border holds 473 million barrels of oil and 5.2 bcm of natural gas. Studies for the fie from the field and the UAE -- 70,000 bpd.
Earlier this month, France's energy major Total SA signed a contract to develop phase 11 of the South Pars gas field in Iran-the world's biggest gas field-marking the first Iranian Petroleum Contract (IPC) with a Western major since most sanctions on Iran were lifted.
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Total, leading a consortium of companies and holding a 50.1-percent interest, signed the contract with the NIOC to develop phase 11 of the South Pars (SP11) project, which will have a production capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day including condensate.
Last Saturday, NIOC's Manouchehri said that the Rouhani administration had tasked the company to sign 10 oil and gas deals with energy majors by the end of the current Iranian year, March 20, 2018, Shana reports.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More