Iran offers oil fields at lucrative terms to India

Rattled by India sharply cutting down purchase of its oil, Iran today offered oil fields on lucrative terms and routing gas pipeline through sea to avoid Pakistan, provided New Delhi raised oil imports.

Iran mounted a high-level delegation led by its Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi to impress upon New Delhi to raise oil purchases, which were cut to 13.3 million tons in 2012-13 from 18 million tons in the previous year.

This year imports are slated to fall further with Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), which bought 3.9 million tons of Iranian oil in 2012-13, not importing any so far this fiscal.

"We had a very fruitful meeting," Ghasemi said describing India as "brother and great neighbour".

"There is great relation and history between the two countries," he said after a 150-minute meeting with Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily.

While Ghasemi refused to divulge details of discussion, Moily said there were "certain issues and difficulties" which need to be resolved, in apparent reference of western sanctions making import as well as investing in Iran difficult.

Sources said Tehran was also willing to re-route the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline through an under-sea route to totally avoid going through Pakistan. New Delhi has refused to join the pipeline over concerns of safety of the line and supplies in Pakistan.

Alternatively, Iran offered to ship the gas in its liquid form (liquefied natural gas or LNG).

Also, it offered a production sharing contract (PSC) to ONGC Videsh Ltd for the Farzad-B gas field, which is estimated to hold 13 Trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves - three times the size of known reserves in Reliance Industries' KG-D6 block.