ANKARA: Turkey’s Unit International has signed a $7 billion agreement with Russia’s state-owned Zarubezhneft and Iran’s Ghadir Investment Holding to drill for oil and natural gas in Iran, the company said on Tuesday.

In a statement, Unit said the three companies had invested a total of $7bn for the drilling, which would take place at three oil fields and one large natural gas field in Iran.

The total reserves at the three oil fields stand at 10bn barrels, and the fields will produce 100,000bpd, Unit said. It said the natural gas field had a production capacity of 75bn cubic metres per year.

The consortium will also be able to drill in other parts of Iran, the statement said.

The natural gas extracted from the drilling will be equal to 1.5 times the 50bn cubic metres of gas Turkey imports annually, Unit said, adding that the reserves in this field would help meet Turkey’s gas demands for the next 150 years.

Unit said all three companies had signed the agreement as equal partners, and added that this marked the first trilateral deal an Iranian company signed with foreign partners.

Ghadir is the largest Tehran Stock Exchange-listed investment company with seven holdings and 140 subsidiaries operating in various sectors such as oil, gas, petrochemicals, power and energy.

Zarubezhneft is already a presence in Iran and one of the 28 domestic and international companies that NIOC has signed more than 30 agreements with in the past two years.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2017