Gazprom’s Head Office has hosted a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of Gazprom’s Management Committee and Nejad Hosseinian, Deputy Oil Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The parties discussed possible directions for cooperation between Gazprom and Iranian oil & gas companies as well as agreed on concrete steps to promote the promising joint businesses. In particular, the parties underlined the top priority directions of interaction, namely joint exploration and development of oil & gas fields as well as transmission, usage and marketing of natural gas.

The parties adopted a decision to study the possibility of creating a Russian-Iranian joint venture to be responsible for implementing the above projects.

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Iran’s proven natural gas reserves average 28 tcm. Domestic gas production is on an annual 10% rise and has exceeded 140 bcm as of year-end 2005. Almost all the gas is being used on the domestic market: some 100 bcm is supplied to commercial customers (including 35 bcm to power plants) and about 40 bcm is injected into oil reservoirs to maintain well flow rates. The length of Iranian gas mains is in excess of 22,000 km.

The only gas production firm in Iran is National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) supplying all the extracted gas to National
Iranian Gas Company (NIGC). NIGC’s businesses include all the operations with gas after its production: treatment, transmission, processing and marketing. NIGC owns 8 gas separation plants with more than 380 MMcm/d in overall capacity.