Manouchehri said no contract, failing to fully observe national interests, will be signed.

He said, "The NIOC follows no political tendency and the new model of oil contract is only a means to raise speed of action and attract more capital; it should not be politically treated," said Manouchehri.

More on the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), Manouchehri said under the model, investment of foreign companies does not mean depriving Iranian companies of the chance, rather the foreign party will be mandated for use all the potential and partnership of Iranian party.

No permission will be given to construction of platform and pipelines overseas and the EPC contractors in Iran will have to undertake refinery activities inside the country, he added.

Manouchehri said foreign companies will afford help just in complicated and technical side of the storage tank engineering and speeding up work, technology and capital transfer and so on.

He said hence, Iranian companies will have a share in the projects and be present in all levels of work.

He emphasized that to this end, foreign capital will be used and the projects taking eight to 10 years on the average to get complete will be finished in about four years and at times lower cost.

He said under the new model of contract, the Iranian contractors will handle the main part of the project and the executive jobs.

Manouchehri said the new model of oil contract is in line with former contracts and similar to buy-back models and nothing new with regards to ownership of the field, equipment, wells and even ownership of production has taken place in the contracts.

The official said international company should stand beside the field along with the Iranian experts so that production is maintained in the longer period of time.

He dismissed rumors that storage tanks are ceded and said not only storage tanks but also a screw will be ceded to any other party.

Manouchehri said the NIOC will be in charge to control whole the production procedure.

The contracts will not be restricted to IPC, rather they will cover a broad spectrum, including Buy Back and EPCF. "We are not at all interested in a special type of contract because national interests and speedy implementation of the projects is the yardstick."

The NIOC official said thus far, companies from such European and Asian states as Austria, Germany, Italy, the UK, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Korea have announced willingness for cooperation and early agreement has been signed with them to assess their terms and conditions.

"Our effort is to maintain our power in the OPEC; this is emphasized in the 6th 5-Year Plan and the 20-Year Development Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

He said investment capacity in the upstream industries is 30 billion dollars a year and taking downstream industries into account, the figure will reach 50 billion dollars a year.

He added that now, 15 billion dollars out of the total sum has been met and once the target is set Iranian oil industry will undergo drastic change.