Just hours before Putin arrived in Tehran, Iran’s National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed a $40 billion MOU with Russia’s Gazprom for joint investment in oil and gas projects in Iran. NIOC’s chief, Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr, said this is the biggest foreign investment ever in the Iranian oil industry, accounting for over one-fourth of all investment from now until 2025. The package reportedly covers investment into six different oil and gas fields, the main ones being the Kish and North Pars gas fields in the Persian Gulf, and South Pars—the world’s largest gas field.
Khojasteh-Mehr outlined the company’s new strategy: “The world needs Iran’s oil, and the share of Iran’s oil exports cannot be removed from the world market, and this shows that Iran is a reliable and stable country for supplying energy to the world.” Overall, Iran is scaling up its investment in the gas and oil sector, and has made an 8-year plan for using foreign investments in this area. The MOU also includes LNG projects, gas export pipelines, and agreements on swaps between the two nations of gas and petroleum products.
