TEHRAN - Managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Mohsen Khojasteh Mehr, says a license has been issued which allows the National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) to spend as much as 800 million dollars in purchasing drilling rigs as well as drilling related equipment and services.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NIOC’s board of directors meeting today, he appreciated the efforts made to remove NIDC from the list of transferring it to the private sector, adding investment in NIDC had been postponed for two decades due to legal restrictions.

“According to a decision made by the cabinet ministers, NIDC has been dropped from the list of transferring to the private sector consequently has provided the opportunity for investment in the company activities as the first chain of operations in the upstream sector,” he said.

Now, the NIOC’s board of directors has approved the issuance of a license that allows NIDC to spend 800 million dollars in purchasing drilling rigs, equipment and services which will play an important role in promoting the status of the company, NIOC’s managing director added. 

He went on to say that with regard to its experience, expertise, assets and fleet the company enjoys, NIDC is one of the most important operational companies not only in the region but in the world and that is why it is required to be supported.

According to NIOC director up to now, NIDC has managed to drill more than 5 thousand oil and gas wells in onshore and offshore sectors of the country along with extracting more than 70 billion barrels of crude oil and gas condensate as well as 5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas from oil and gas fields which is remarkable.

NIDC with its talented workforce is not only able to drill wells in the most complex and deepest oil and gas fields of the country but by enjoying very high expertise, it is very skilled in containing eruptions from event high-pressure oil and gas wells as it proved it during its operations to contain eruptions form Kuwait oil wells after the invasion of Iraq in 1990s, he continued.

EF/