Tehran Times - National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has signed a memorandum of understanding with a domestic consortium for developing Band-e-Karkheh oilfield in southwestern Khuzestan Province.

According to Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC), Alireza Zamani, the head of the field�s development project, the required technical documentation is presented by the four Iranian companies which comprise the consortium and members of the joint technical committee are also introduced.

�Consortium representatives also visited the site,� Zamani said.

In late April, NIOC announced that the company is planning to award five oil exploration and development projects to domestic companies.

Earlier in February, for the first time, NIOC signed a memorandum of understanding with an Iranian company called TENCO for geological and geophysical studies at Toudej, located in southern Fars Province.

In a press conference in December, Saleh Hendi, the exploration director of NIOC, said: �Plans are underway to award exploration projects to domestic companies now that the U.S. is putting pressure on foreign companies to operate in Iran�.

Also, speaking in the 3rd Iran International Exploration and Production Congress and Exhibition (Iran E&P 2019) held in Tehran on February 23, Hendi noted that like the mining sector in which mines are being developed by the private sector, NIOC should also award oil and gas fields development projects to capable private companies.

�Iran has huge resources of shale oil, shale gas and gas hydrates which have not yet been developed; exploration and development of these resources should be awarded to the private sector.� the official said.

"The private sector can well handle a significant part of the government's responsibilities in the oil industry," he said, adding that this could be initiated with small projects and small fields, and then move to bigger projects.

The budget bill for the current Iranian calendar year 1398, which began on March 21, 2019, indicates that the budget allocated to the development projects is not expected to see a noticeable rise in this year, and it is while there are over 80,000 semi-finished development projects in the country; so the government has invited the private sector to contribute to finishing them.

In this due, oil and gas sector as the main source of income for the country welcomes private sector�s presence in its projects, both in exploration and in development.

In development sector, as there are many exploration blocks waiting for implementation of projects, NIOC is seriously following up the plans to lay the ground for the private sector�s contribution.

As Hendi has announced, some 250 oil fields have been recently discovered throughout the country, while 120 fields have been developed, and there are 130 discovered gas fields, of them 100 fields have been developed.