Speaking on the sidelines of the signing ceremony of a memorandum of understanding (MOU), the minister of petroleum added that implementation of 50 new oil industry projects, worth 25 billion dollars, will be started this year.

“This year, we will see a jump in production in a variety of oil industry related activities including oil, gas, refining and petrochemicals”, the minister said.

“Not only will oil and gas production rise this year but petrochemical production capacity will increase by 6 million tons and at the same time oil refining sector will raise its refining capacity by 50 thousand barrels per day”, the minister of petroleum said.

Today, 30 April, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed on studying development plans of 16 gas fields. The deal was signed by a number of domestic holdings, petrochemical and exploration and production companies and under its provisions 6.4 billion dollars will be invested in the area.

“Today is the beginning of Iranian large holdings and petrochemical companies’ participation in developing gas fields as well as gas storage facilities, gasoline production at Methanol units and associated gas collection projects” Owji said.

According to the minister, over the past couple of years, Iranian petrochemical companies demonstrated that they can manage large oil and gas projects in cooperation with exploration and production (E&P) companies.

Elsewhere in his remarks, he said: The previous governments showed a lot of resistance against private sector’s participation in upstream sector activities but today we are witnessing a breakthrough.