Financial Express: India-Iran Deal Soon on Farzad-B Project

In what marks renascent India-Iran commercial ties and New Delhi’s aggressive focus on overseas energy assets, both countries may finally agree on a deal for the development of the long-languishing Farzad-B gas field in the Persian Gulf by an Indian consortium led by ONGC Videsh (OVL), which helped discover the field in way back in 2008. Sources privy to the matter told FE that petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan would visit Iran on April 6-7 with the intent of signing a “definitive agreement” for the project.

Although an OVL-Indian Oil-Oil India consortium had spent $900 million in the Farzad-B field thanks to a 2002 preliminary pact with Iranian authorities, no formal contract to exploit the resources has been signed till date, due to the US sanctions that had prevailed on Iran.

While no headway in commercial exploitation of the reserves — pegged at 21.68 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of which roughly 60% is believed to be recoverable-, each side blamed the other for the delay and at one point, Tehran contemplated to re-auction the asset along with several others under revised terms of a new Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC). MORE