Azerbaijan, Baku, Jun.7/ Trend R.Zamanov
Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi warned all the contractors to avoid importing equipment that is currently being produced domestically.
All the contractors who ignore the warning will be omitted from the list of oil ministry's contractors, the Mehr News Agency quoted Qasemi as saying.
Even if the prices of Iranian-made equipment are slightly higher, the contractors should purchase the Iranian goods, he underscored.
This comes as Chinese equipment have been largely imported for carrying out different oil and gas projects.
Iran's oil, gas and petrochemical contractors annually purchase 30 billion dollars worth of equipment. Last year the amount faced some 50 percent falling to 15 billion dollars.
Iranian-made equipment accounted for 5 billion dollars of the mentioned amount, while foreign goods especially Chinese equipment accounted for the rest.
Iran sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia and is trying to grow its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, especially in its South Pars gas field.
Iran's total in-place oil reserves have been estimated to be more than 560 billion barrels, with about 140 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Moreover, heavy and extra-heavy varieties of crude oil account for roughly 70-100 billion barrels of the total reserves.
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