Iran is said to be targeting an increase in oil production from 3.85 to 4 million barrels per day by the end of 2016. Iran is also hoping to start export of a new heavy oil, called West Karun, and which is expected to compete with Iraq’s Basra Heavy crude, which has gained a significant market with US and Asian refiners since its launch in 2015.
Iran’s new upstream contract, the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), was delayed by parliamentary amendments but is now scheduled for launch in January 2017. The State-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has already signed up an IPC with local firm, Persia Oil and Gas Development Company, which is one of eight Iranian contractors authorised to team up with international joint venture partners. Whilst Iran’s production costs may be rock bottom, foreign investment (and currently foreign exchange) is needed to deliver scale and speed of development.
NIOC (on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum) has published its “Pre-qualification Questionnaire for Exploration and Production Oil and Gas Companies,” to be completed by 19.11.16 in order for NIOC to publish a “Long List” of qualified applicants on 7.12.16. This list is intended to be valid for two years as a pre-requisite for participating in upstream tenders. NIOC intends to then invite a short-list of qualified applicants from the long list, depending on project type (Short List).
Long List applicants will be scored according to typical technical and financial criteria but with some additional emphasis seemingly echoing NIOC’s objectives, including “scale” and “internationality”. The greatest score (25%) is allocated under the heading “Reliability” to credit ratings. Whilst it seems unusual to delegate financial capability diligence simply to reliance on a third party credit rating agencies, it does reduce the internal resources needed to sift financial data. That said, a number of those with credit ratings (and by definition, public equity or debt) may not yet have the appetite for Iranian investments, whilst those privately funded entrepreneurs and companies with strong balance sheets, may not seemingly participate, assuming that NIOC doesn’t choose to deal with non-compliant applicants.
“Scale” is assessed in terms of production rates and wells drilled over the last three years, with technical capability assessed over the same period and broken down into experience type including conventional and fractured operations, and improved and enhanced oil recovery. Choosing the last three years of oil pricing where some operations may be moth-balled etc. may be significant, but given that it is unclear as to how applicants may be assessed competitively, this is perhaps academic, provided a minimum threshold is demonstrated.
“Internationality” is judged against an “applicant’s headquarters’ business and/or registration place” which is seemingly designed to allow some flexibility to avoid being disadvantaged by a tax headquarters and otherwise to make the best of an organisation’s international operations, and possibly from more than one headquarters, if one takes a literal interpretation of the punctuation.
For the purposes of the Short List, applicants are “requested” to specify their “priorities and interested fields” and whether they wish to act as operator or non-operator. This clearly allows room for judgement versus competitors as to whether applicants would wish to share their commercial position at the outset.
It seems likely that most of the credit-rated applicants who would qualify, are already known to NIOC / have registered their interest more or less formally. The collation of extra data should enable NIOC to take into account preferences, but to grade applicants and to allocate tender opportunities in a manner perceived as transparent and which tends to avoid the dominance of any particular constituencies. Whilst the application of such process could be regarded as a short-term disincentive to some with an incumbent position, it could also be used to justify the favouring of incumbents, safe in the knowledge that the market was tested first. Otherwise, such process is likely to be regarded more generally as a welcome codification of what is expected to be a hotly-contested new market for lower cost developments.
