OEEC: Iran ready to take on unexploited market

This year’s Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference (OEEC) held in Amsterdam RAI is hosting the ‘Iran National Pavilion’ and a unique delegation consisting of more than 70 decision-makers, top influencers, and managers, representing the top-levels of Iran’s oil & gas industry.

The event hosted two technical sessions that focused on Iran as the country is looking to make the most out of its large oil and gas reserves both offshore and onshore.

The first session, named ‘Iran: Offshore Opportunities’, was held on Tuesday, October 25, 2016, from 12:45 until 14:45 CET, and focused on the current business opportunities arising in Iran following the lifting of sanctions against the country earlier this year.

The potential opportunities emerging from Iran’s revitalization of the offshore sector were discussed by the speakers of the first session which included A. Zamani Nia, Deputy of International Affairs at Iran Ministry of Oil; M. Moazemi, Deputy Minister & CEO of IDRO at Ministry of Industry; T. Mansourian, Senior Investment Expert at NIOC; Y. Etemadi, Exploration Director Caspian Sea at NIOC (KEPCO); and M. Daneshfar, Investment Director at IOOC.

 

Tools to grasp business opportunities in Iran

 

The second technical session, named ‘Iran: Building a Successful Business Strategy’, was also held on Tuesday from 15:30 until 17:30 CET. This session elaborated on the earlier one and zoomed in on tools that are necessary to grasp the current business opportunities in Iran.

It was moderated by Safiyeh Salehi Mobarakeh, a consultant for CBC Oil & Gas.

Introducing the session and its first speaker, Mobarakeh said: “This session is going to emphasize all aspects that involve doing business in Iran, thinking of insurance coverage, export guarantees, banking, investing, transferring money and receiving money from Iran. We have multiple speakers here today who will share their expertise on this various subjects with you. Our first speaker is Babak Hosseni.”

Speaking about investment arrangements in Iran, Babak Hosseni, CEO at ARAM Group, in his presentation said: “Comparing to a global oil downturn, in Iran it is a different situation. Everything is going higher and higher and there are a lot of projects which we must do together.”

“Big, unexploited market ready to be taken.”

He added that, when it comes to human capital, Iran has a lot of highly educated people and as such it is ready to take on the big unexploited market.

However, he noted that the Iranian sector is also facing challenges like the higher risk for the banking system, as well as unknown and unclear, often-changing rules.

Following, Talin Mansourian, a Senior Investment Expert at National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), talked about offshore opportunities and briefly introduced strategies, procedures and a framework that NIOC made based on recent changes and movements that the company has had.

She said: “We now have about thousand projects and 6.5 thousand sub-projects. We’re trying to move to a program-based strategy by focusing on the fields. It means that we prefer to have an integrated approach to the project. In order to participate in tenders, the companies will participate in the pre-qualification procedure. Pre-qualification announcement has been published on the tenth of October, the deadline for submission of applications is the nineteenth of November and a long list of the qualified companies will be published on the seventh of December.”

Mansourian’s presentation was followed by the one made by Nasser Falahatchian, Investment and Finance Director at the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) which is responsible for the design and implementation of the monetary and credit policies with due regard to the general economic policy of the country.

Speaking about the current banking investment facilities, he explained the structure of a financing procedure whereby framework agreement will be signed between Iranian bank and foreign banks and, under that framework agreement, individual projects will be financed. He also noted that any international bank will be able to provide financing for a certain project.

The session continued with a speech by Arash Shahraini, a Member of the Board & Deputy CEO at Export Guarantee fund of Iran (EGFI). He spoke about solutions for trade and project finance in Iran emphasizing that the main point is that the projects are “export-oriented”. He also added that there is hope a progress will be made in recruiting new partners in January.

“…We would like to focus on the oil, gas, and power industry.”

Pierre Bartholomeus, a Member of advisory board Dutch Energy Solutions (DES) spoke about the Dutch entrepreneurship program for Iran. “We are developing a program for Iran, duration of this program is three years and we would like to focus on the oil, gas, and power industry.”

Bartholomeus added: “Potential in Iran is huge and rationale behind our program is that we want to help Iran because they are looking for a new technology transfer, and we want to help them in building their own new oil and gas industry.”

Other speakers at the session included Joost Melis, Associate Partner at Philip Sidney; Stephan Naber, Senior Underwriter at Atradius; Nico Noorlander, CEO at Hollandia Offshore; and Arie Vliegenthart, Global business development director upstream at SGS.

Offshore Energy Today Staff