Russian oil companies Gazprom Neft and Lukoil have filed plans to develop oil fields in Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said in two separate statements this week.
Lukoil, together with Indonesia's state firm Pertamina, are proposing to develop the Mansouri oil field in southwestern Iran, NIOC said on Wednesday.
Back in February this year, Pertamina was proposing to develop two oil fields in Ab Teymour and Mansouri, which the Indonesian company had estimated at containing 1.5 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Gazprom Neft, for its part, has filed plans to develop two oil fields in Iran-- Changouleh and Cheshmeh Khosh.
NIOC will review the Russian company's plan and will decide if the proposal will go through, based on NIOC's terms and conditions, the Iranian company said.
Earlier this week, top Gazprom Neft officials visited Tehran and met with Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Iran's deputy petroleum minister for international affairs and trading.
"Iran and Russia have signed a cooperation roadmap based on which workshops will be held in the two countries on enhanced oil recovery and maximization of oil production from oilfields," the news service of Iran's oil ministry says.
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Earlier this month, Russia's Zarubezhneft, Turkish energy company Unit International, and Iran's non-governmental firm Ghadir Investment Company pledged to invest a combined US$7 billion to drill at three oil fields and one natural gas field in Iran.
At the beginning of this year, NIOC issued a list of 29 companies that had qualified for bidding in oil and gas tenders, of whom only one is a U.S. player, Schlumberger. Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil were among those that qualified, alongside China's Sinopec, CNPC, CNOOC, and CNPW, as well as the state-owned oil companies of Indonesia and Malaysia - Pertamina and Petronas - plus Japan's INPEX Corporation, Itochu, Mitsui, and Mitsubishi, and Japan Petroleum Corporation.
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