National Iranian Oil Company
شركت ملّی نفت ايران

File:NIOC.svg
Type	State-owned enterprise
Industry	Oil and gas
Founded	1948
Headquarters	Tehran, Iran
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Rostam Ghasemi (Minister of Petroleum) Ahmad Ghalehbani (Managing Director) Abdol-Mohammad Delparish (COO) Mahmoud Nikousokhan (CFO)
Products	Oil, natural gas and petrochemicals
Revenue	US$ 85 billion (2010)[1]
Total assets	US$ 200 billion (2010)[1]
Owner(s)	Iranian government
Employees	41,000 (2011)
Website	'en.nioc.ir'

The National Iranian Oil Company (Persian: شرکت ملی نفت ایران, Sherkat Melli Naft'e Iran‎), a government-owned corporation under the direction of the Ministry of Petroleum of Iran, is an oil and natural gas producer and distributor headquartered in Tehran. It was established in 1948.^[2] NIOC ranks as the world's second largest oil company, after Saudi Arabia's state-owned Aramco.^[3]

The NIOC is exclusively responsible for the exploration, extraction, transportation and exportation of crude oil, as well as sales of natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Having provided the domestic refineries and manufacturing plants with crude oil required for the petroleum products, the NIOC exports its surplus production according to commercial considerations in the framework of the quotas determined by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and at the prices prevalent in the international markets. The NIOC also signs some long term contracts on "buy-back" basis with foreign companies in order to exploit national oil fields and export its products. The NIOC exports natural gas and liquefied natural gas via the "National Iranian Gas Export Company".^[2]

NIOC's oil and gas reserves in early 2005 was as follows;^[4]

• Recoverable liquid hydrocarbon reserves in early 2005, 136.99 billion barrels (21.780 km³) 10% of world's total.
• Recoverable gas reserves in early 2005, 28.17×10¹² m³ (15% of world's total).

Current NIOC production capacities include over 4 million barrels (640×10^³ m³) of crude oil and in excess of 500 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.^[2] In 2008, the average extraction cost of oil was less than $5 per barrel. This does not include processing (refining) and distribution costs.^[5]

Iran’s cumulative oil production has reached to 61 billion barrels (9.7×10⁹ m³) by the end of 2007,^[6] most of these volume produced after 1951, under the supervision of NIOC.

Iran's overall export crude oil was valued at US$85 billion in 2010.

History[link]

The Shah opens the facilities of International Naval Oil Company of Iran in 1970.

National Iranian Oil Company was established in 1948 under the reign of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi and prime ministership of Saed. Then Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was entrusted 1951 with the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Following the 1953 coup that overthrew Mossadegh it became a consortium of international oil companies: 40% owned by Anglo-Iranian holding, five American companies holding 40%, and the Royal Dutch/Shell and Compagnie Francaise de Petroles holding 10% each. The consortium shared profits 50-50 with Iran but did "not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors."^[7] According to the company's Web site: The victory of the Islamic revolution annulled the Consortium Agreement of 1954 and all regulations pertaining to it. The taking of power by the Islamic Republic led to the withdrawal of foreign employees from Iran's oil industry; domestic employees took full control of its affairs.^[8]

NIOC's Oil Reserves[link]

Iranian oil and gas fields, infrastructure

Iran oil production, domestic consumption and exports

According to OPEC, NIOC recoverable liquid hydrocarbon reserves at the end of 2006 was 1,384 billion barrels (2.2×10¹¹ m³).^[6]

NIOC oil reserves at the beginning of 2001 was reported to be about 99 billion barrels (1.57×10¹⁰ m³),^[6] however in 2002 the result of NIOC’s study showed huge reserves upgrade adding about 317 billion barrels (5.04×10¹⁰ m³) of recoverable reserves to the Iranian oil reserves.

After 2003 Iran has made some significant discoveries which lead to addition of another 7.7 billion barrels (1.22×10⁹ m³) of oil to the recoverable reserves of Iran.^[9]

The vast majority of Iran's crude oil reserves are located in giant onshore fields in the south-western Khuzestan region near the Iraqi border. Overall, Iran has 40 producing fields – 27 onshore and 13 offshore. Iran's crude oil is generally medium in sulfur and in the 28°-35 °API range.

Table 1- The five biggest NIOC oil fields;^[10]

Strategic petroleum reserves[link]

Iran has begun plans to create a global strategic petroleum reserves in 2006 with the construction of 15 crude oil storage tanks with a planned capacity of 10 million barrels (1,600,000 m³).^[11] The storage capacity of oil products in the country is around 11.5 billion liters (2011), but it will reach 16.7 billion liters by the end of the Fifth Five Year Development Plan (2010-2015).^[12] As at 2012, Iran is capable of storing crude oil in the Persian Gulf for a period of 10–12 days. The figure should hit 30–40 days after the construction of new storage facilities are completed.^[13]

NIOC's Gas Reserves[link]

NIOC holds about 1,000×10^¹² cu ft (28,000 km³) of proven Natural gas reserves of which 36% are as associated gas and 64% is in non associated gas fields. It stands for world's second largest reserves after Russia.^[14]

NIOC’s ten biggest Non-Associated Gas Fields;

Recent discoveries[link]

Since 1995, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has made significant oil and gas discoveries, standing for some 84-billion-barrel (1.34×10¹⁰ m³) of oil in place and at least 175×10^¹² cu ft (5,000 km³) of gas in place, which are listed below.^[18]

Organizational structure[link]

The company is completely owned by Iranian government. NIOC's General Assembly consists of:

• The President,
• Vice President,
• Director General of the Management and Planning Organization,
• Ministers of Oil,
• Energy,
• Industries and Mines,
• Labor and Social Affairs,
• Economy and Finance

It is its highest decision marking body, determining the company's general policy guide lines, and approving the annual budgets, operations and financial statements and balance sheets. The company's Board of Directors has the authority and major responsibilities to approve the operational schemes within the general framework ratified by the General Assembly, approve transactions and contracts, and prepare budgets and Board reports and annual balance sheets for presentation to the General Assembly.

The Board supervises the implementation of general policy guidelines defined by the General Assembly, and pursues executive operations via the company's Managing Director.

Subsidiary companies[link]

With appropriate division of tasks and delegation of responsibilities to subsidiaries- affiliates, NIOC has been able to establish acceptable degrees of coordination within its organizational set up. In fact, NIOC's Directors act primarily in policy making and supervision while subsidiaries act as their executive arm in coordinating an array of operations such as exploration, drilling, production and delivery of crude oil and natural gas, for export and domestic consumption.

The NIOC's subsidiaries are as follows:

NIOC's major domestic contractors[link]

Although usually neglected and overlooked, Iran also has a number of very active private companies in the oil sector. The growing private sector activity is mainly active in projects involving the construction of oil field units, refinery equipment, tanks and pipelines, as well as engineering. Iranian manufacturers will supply oil industry with $10 billion worth of domestically-made goods and equipment in 2012.^[47]

Iranian companies are already outperforming foreign firms in South Pars.^[48] NIOC produces 60-70% of its industrial equipment domestically including refineries, oil tankers, oil rigs, offshore platforms and exploration instruments.^{[49][50][51][52]}

Participations in foreign gas fields[link]

• Iran owns 50% of the offshore gas field of Rhum in the North Sea, which is Britain's largest untapped gas field. It is a joint-venture with BP worth $1 million a day at June 15, 2010 spot prices.^[45]

• Iran has another 10% joint-venture participation with BP and other foreign oil companies in Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas field, producing 8 billion cubic meters of gas per year, worth up to a reported $2.4 billion per year. The Iranian entity with which BP has partnered in these ventures is the Swiss-based NaftIran, a subsidiary of NIOC.^[45] Shah Deniz is not subject to US sanctions.^[53]

See also[link]

	Iran portal
	Companies portal

• International rankings of Iran
• Petroleum industry in Iran
• Ministry of Petroleum of Iran
  • National Iranian Gas Company
  • National Iranian Petrochemical Company
  • National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company
• Economy of Iran
• Iranian oil bourse
• Foreign Direct Investment in Iran
• Privatization in Iran
• Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company - used to be 50% in control of NIOC and the focus of a dispute between Israel and Iran.

References[link]

External links[link]

• NIOC - Official Site
• SHANA - Official News Service for Oil and Gas in Iran
• US Department of Energy - Iran
• PEDEC - Official Site
• Oil & Gas Industry in Iran - 2003 Study (history, market overview, domestic suppliers, major projects, buy-backs)
• Australian Trade - Industry Profile for the Oil Sector in Iran
• Iran Oil & Gas Resources
• National Iranian Oil Company's Information Center & Central Library
• UN Comtrade - Iran crude oil exports stats
• NIOC Football Team - Tehran Oil Football Committee

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