Iran to be major player in Natural Gas

Let's see....... Has huge oil reserves and wants to develop their natural gas reserves.

Hmmm.... Has an unstable leader that denies the Holocaust, supports terrorism, hell bent to get nuclear weapons and wants to control the region.....

Should we be worried? I think so.......

From Iran Focus --

VIENNA, April 21, 2007 (AFP) - Austria's OMV, the biggest oil and gas group in Central Europe, announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran Saturday to jointly develop a gas field in the Gulf.

As part of its agreement with the National Iranian Oil Company, OMV will help develop parts of the South Pars gas field, one of the largest in the world......

It will also set up a liquefaction facility for the Iran Liquefied Natural Gas project and conclude further supply agreements for LNG from Iran....

State television said OMV would also purchase gas from Iran.

The Islamic republic is keen to become a big gas exporter but has been slow to develop its resources. LNG is natural gas altered for transportation in special tankers.

Gholamhossein Nozari, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said three agreements had been signed with OMV, concerning the development of phase 12 of the South Pars gas field as well as construction of an LNG plant.

"Negotiations with the Austrian OMV company ended with an agreement that this company ... participates in the upstream and downstream activities of this project," he was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

He said OMV would take a 10 percent stake in the new plant, from which it would buy 10.2 million tonnes of LNG per year. The report did not give details on when construction would start.

The IRNA news agency said Iran would deliver five billion cubic metres of natural gas per year to Europe via the planned Nabucco pipeline, a 4.6 billion euro project to transport gas from Turkey to Austria. OMV heads the Nabucco consortium. More....

From Persian Journal --

Iran signed a major agreement with Austrian energy group OMV yesterday to help develop the country's vast gas resources and build a plant for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

It is described as Iran's biggest such contract with Europe, and some Iranian media put its total value at up to $30bn over 25 years, including the sale ofbns of cubic metres of natural gas to the continent.

The US, which accuses mullahs of seeking to build atom bombs, has urged its allies not to invest in the Islamic Republic.

Iran sits atop the world's second-largest gas reserves after Russia. But politics, sanctions and construction delays have slowed its gas development and analysts say it is unlikely to become a major exporter for a decade.