IRAN TO START EXPLORING OIL IN THE CASPIAN SEA
TEHRAN 10th Mar. (IPS) Iran signed Friday its first contract for drilling oil in the Caspian Sea with a Swedish company, ahead of a planned meeting for April of officials from the five littoral states aimed at defining the juridical status of the oil and gas-rich Sea.
Oil experts said immediately that the agreement between with the Sweden's GVA Consultants and Iran's Sadra Marine Structures Company was a major departure from Iran’s stated policy of equal sharing of the Caspian Sea between the five countries of Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
"We had to start oil exploration activities because others have started and we don't want to be left behind'', Iranian Oil Minister Bizhan Namdar-Zanganeh said.
The 226 millions US dollar project, which will take 32 months to be completed, involves building an oil rig on a submersible platform in Neka, northern province of Mazandaran, creating 2,000 job opportunities, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.
The Caspian Sea is estimated to contain the world's largest oil and gas reserves after the Persian Gulf and Siberia.
Treaties signed in 1921 and 1940 between Iran and the then Soviet Union call for joint sharing of the Sea’s resources. But the agreements, which Iran insists on their validity, has been jeopardised after the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the emergence of new states in Central Asia, bringing Caspian’s littoral countries to five, with some of them, like Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan having already established their sea limits.
Iran reject division of the Caspian on sea-bed basis because it limits it’s share of the waters to 13 per cent instead of the 20 per cent it claims if the Caspian is divided equally among the five nations, but Almaty do not agree.
"Iran seeks a 20 percent share, but the 1920 and 1940 treaties are still valid and any legal status for the Caspian Sea should be defined on the basis of the treaties", Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi told a Tehran press conference.
The controversial issue would be discussed between Iran's President Mohammad Khatami and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during their talks next week, when Mr. Khatami goes to Moscow Monday for his first official visit to Russia since he came to power four years ago.
Earlier this month, Kazakstan indicated it would be interested in shipping oil through a planned pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey.
The United States has pushed for the construction of the Baku-Ceyhan (in Turkey) pipeline as an alternative to shipping oil from the Caspian Sea region through Russia or Iran, with the latter being considered by experts as the most "natural, faster to realise and less expensive".
An agreement on building the $2.7 billion project was signed last fall and preliminary engineering work is under way.
Both Iran and Russia opposes the project. ENDS IRAN CASPIAN OIL 10301