TEHRAN, Nov 10: Iran Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh called on Saturday for foreign investment in the country’s natural gas sector.

Iran welcomes all direct foreign investment, notably in the field of production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and is ready to protect foreign capital, Zangeneh said at a conference on gas and its resources in the Middle East.

He said Iranian gas exports to Turkey should begin soon.

Iran and Turkey signed in August 1996 a $20 billion contract to deliver 192 billion cubic metres (6.7 trillion cubic feet) of Iranian gas to Turkey over 22 years.

Last year, they extended the contract to 25 years and the volume of exports to 228 billion cubic metres (7.9 trillion cubic feet).

But the flow of gas, which was set to start in 1999, has not yet begun, for reasons never explained.

Zangeneh told the conference that the construction of pipelines remains the priority for shipping gas to neighboring countries and other markets, including the Far East.

Iran wants to stretch its production from 300 million cubic metres (10.5 billion cubic feet) to 500 million cubic metres (17.5 billion cubic feet) by 2005 for gas deals expected to be signed by year’s end in the Gulf, Zangeneh said.

Iran is estimated to have some 26 trillion cubic metres (910 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas, or some 18 per cent of the world’s reserves, the second largest in the world after Russia.

The meeting gathered experts and representatives from oil firms, including TotalFinaElf and BP.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangheneh said on Saturday Iran was reluctant to cut its oil production in line with an eventual Opec decision without non-members of the cartel following suit.

Any new reduction of output must depend on guaranteed cooperation from non-members of Opec, he told journalists during a gas conference in Tehran.

If there is no cooperation from non-member states Iran will not be prepared to reduce its production by even a single barrel, Zangheneh warned.

He said however that the 11 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) were united in their stance.

All the market parameters require a general cutback in production up to the second quarter of next year, he said.

The price of oil bobbed up above $21 a barrel on Friday, as Russia finally signalled it was ready to join Opec in reducing volumes to help put a floor under a market weakened by the global economic downturn.

Opec itself is expected to slash its own output by as much as 1.5 million barrels from December when energy chiefs meet next Wednesday in Vienna.

But the cartel has admitted that its actions alone will not be enough to rescue prices, which earlier this week fell below $19 a barrel for the first time since July 1999. At that point, prices had fallen more than 30 per cent in the two months since the terrorist attacks on the United States.

Opec has tried to form an alliance with non-member states such as Russia, Mexico and Norway so that its own output reductions it has already cut production by almost 15 per cent so far this year do not merely result in other producers filling their boots.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Nuaimi is expected to visit Oslo and Moscow before Wednesday’s meeting, and Zangheneh could also go to Vienna via Moscow.

Iran is the second largest producer in Opec after Saudi Arabia.—AFP