New Delhi: India has lost its $3-billion bet on Iran, with Tehran showing the door to New Delhi in the giant Farzad-B gas field in Farsi block after a decade of negotiations with a consortium of Indian state-run oil companies that discovered the asset in 2008.
National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed a $1.7 billion deal for bringing the discovery to production with Petropars in the presence of petroleum minister Bijan Zangeneh, Iranian oil ministry’s official news agency Shana said.
Farzad-B is the second Indian investment proposal to come unstuck in Iran despite commitments by the top leadership of both countries. Teheran last year dropped India’s $2-billion offer and decided to build the Chabahar railway link on its own.
Farzad-B negotiations have been dogged by stalemates since the beginning. The Indian consortium led by ONGC Videsh had signed the exploration agreement in 2002 and invested $400 million. Iran allowed the agreement to expire in 2009, a year after the discovery. It was not immediately clear how the consortium will recover its investments.
Since then, several deadlines for a deal were missed. India blamed Teheran’s flip-flop over the deal’s terms for the delay, even as it was hamstrung by the US sanctions on Iran imposed by the Barack Obama administration in 2010. Tehran responded by describing the Indian offers as “unsatisfactory” or reverted with fresh conditions. Times of India
