A tender for developing Iran’s Azadegan oilfield has been delayed for another few months to allow energy companies more time to study the field, a senior Iranian oil official said on Tuesday.
Tehran is looking to increase its crude output, and with 37 billion barrels of oil the Azadegan field is Iran’s largest, shared with neighbouring Iraq. It is located in southern Iran, 80 km west of the Khuzestan provincial city of Ahvaz.
Iran said this month that international energy companies including France’s Total, Malaysia’s Petronas and Japan’s Inpex, have presented technical surveys for the development of the Azadegan oil field for the tender. “The tender will not happen in this government because we have not signed memorandum of understandings with some companies and they need three to four months to study the field,” the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Ali Kardor, was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, who was re-elected in May’s election, will form a new government in August.
The tender for developing the Azadegan oilfield, Iran’s first such tender since the lifting of international sanctions more than a year ago, has been postponed several times for unspecified reasons.
Iran’s oil minister said in May that the international tender for the Azadegan oilfield was underway.
