National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) began a fresh round of negotiation to explore and develop new oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea, the Mehr News Agency reported on Friday.

According to the report, an oil delegation of Khazar Exploration and Production COmpany (KEPCO), a subsidiary of NIOC, has held negotiations with SOCAR experts and executives in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Khoshbakht Yusifzadeh, the First Vice-President of the SOCAR, welcomed visiting experts and executives of KEPCO and highlighted how working on energy potentials can help Iran and Azerbaijan flourish their economy.
Turning to the opportunity available to the two countries to explore and develop oil and gas fields, Yusifzadeh pressed the necessity and importance of continued negotiation between the two sides to make the best use of the cooperation opportunity at hand.
Also, according to Yousef Etemadi, the KEPCO managing director, bilateral negotiations mainly focused on executive issues related to exploration and development of gas and oil fields located in the Caspian Sea and the future of oil cooperation between Iran and Azerbaijan in view of their presence in the Caspian Sea.
To Etemadi, some possible cooperation fields for Iran and Azerbaijan are joint use of advanced softwares in oil and gas industries and regional kinetic studies.
Already in August, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh held negotiation with Azerbaijani Minister of Economy and Industry Shahin Mustafayev to boost oil and gas cooperation.
There are plenty of grounds for the two country to cooperate, inter alia, developing Shah Deniz gas field and joint fields in the Caspian Sea, and gas export. What bring the two countries even closer together, are massive oil and gas resources they are sitting on and also, their hands-on experience of oil exploration, production, and export.
AK/