Iranian firm inks €1.2b deal to build 4 drilling rigs

The Global Petro Tech Kish Company has inked a deal worth €1.2 billion with the National Iranian Central Oilfields Company to build four drilling rigs.
IRNA quoted the National Iranian Central Oilfields Company managing director Mahmoud Zirakchianzadeh as saying that the Global Petro Tech Kish Company will construct four drilling rigs for oil and gas fields in the Persian Gulf.

On January 22, the Shana News Agency quoted Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi as saying that Iranian manufacturers supply up to 95 percent of the domestic oil industry’s required equipment.

Until recent years, a lion’s share of the needed equipment was provided from foreign sources, but thanks to Iranian knowledge and expertise, such equipment is largely supplied by domestic manufacturers, Qasemi said.

Global sanctions against Iran not only did not have any hindering effect on the country’s oil industry, but also have turned the Islamic republic into an exporter of equipment and goods, Qasemi said in May 2012.

“Despite all threats of the enemies, there is no concern regarding development of the oil industry relying on expertise and knowledge of Iranian scientists,” he said, IRNA reported.

Qasemi said that the country is approaching “total self-sufficiency” in the production of equipment required in the country’s oil industry.

Iran plans to become self-sufficient in producing 19 highly used goods which are strategic in the oil industry, the deputy oil minister for technology Mohammad-Reza Moqaddam said in July.

Moqaddam added that technologies for manufacturing the goods should be indigenized by the end of the fifth five-year development plan (2015), the Mehr News Agency reported.