Wednesday, 04 December 2019 13:32

Hassan Rouhani: Iran is unfreezing Caspian resources

“Iran is quite interested in implementing oil exploration and production projects in the Caspian Sea together with Azerbaijan”, the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated.

“Iran is watching over an implementation of joint oil exploration and production projects in the Caspian Sea, and we hope that this issue will be actively discussed at the meeting of the Iran-Azerbaijan intergovernmental commission”, Rouhani said at the meeting with Azerbaijan’s Vice Premier Shahin Mustafayev.

Rouhani also emphasized an importance of constructing near-border power plants, especially at Hudaferin, noting that this project would help to extend cooperation between the two countries, and pointed an importance of developing science-technical relations.

“Tehran is ready for cooperating with Baku in all technological fields, and we hope that creation of the joint industry may even larger deepen this cooperation”, Rouhani said.

It is noteworthy that the USA imposed new sanctions on Iran on 1 November 2019. Their impact also covered the construction sector of the Islamic Republic. Besides, supply of a number of materials to Tehran was prohibited. The relevant document was inked by the US State Secretary Mike Pompeo, the press secretary of the US State Department Morgan Ortagus said on Thursday (October 31).

Washington will prevent Iran from acquiring “strategic materials for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps”, construction sector and nuclear weapon proliferation, the document says.

In the meantime, new US sanctions were imposed on Iran on 5 November 2018. They concern the banking and oil sectors of economy and can fully paralyze them. The USA passed the sanctions after Washington abandoned the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. This document is a key element in the world security system.

In November 2018, the USA imposed new sanctions against Iran, which threaten to paralyze the country’s economy. Prior to that, President Trump had stated about a withdrawal from the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program. In 2013, the Islamic Republic of Iran for the first time offered India to sign a PSA contract on Farzad B gas field. Besides, Tehran was ready to accept a 100% payment in Indian rupees, the Indian newspaper Business Standard reports.

Because of the imposing of a whole range of sanctions by the USA and EU, Iran is facing problems in performing operations through a banking system, which causes serious problems in payment for oil supplies from Iran. Apart from this, insurance companies are forbidden to insure Iranian tankers.

India is still one of the largest consumers of Iranian oil.

It is also noteworthy that Iran is pretending to develop gas fields (Araz, Alov, Sharg) located in the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea, which is why bp’s research vessel left the area of exploration at promising sites in 2001 after the demands of the Iranian warfare craft. Operations on the fields have been halted since then.

Apart from this, as early as December 14, 1997, the Government of Iran announced about an agreement signed with Shell and Lasmo on geophysical surveys at “Lerik-deniz”, D-43, D-41 structures located in the southern part of the Azeri sector of the Caspian Sea and partially in the Turkmen sector. As the result of the statement made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, operations at the mentioned areas were halted. 

According to exploration of Azerbaijani geophysicists, the structures revealed in the deepwater sector of Azerbaijan, partially Turkmenistan and Iran contain over 3 trillion cubic meters of estimated reserves of natural gas.

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