IPC - Iran’s Gordian knot
Since November 2015, when Iran introduced its newly designed oil and gas agreement model, called Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), the country hasn’t issued any tender yet due to domestic challenges and criticism. Iran had planned to offer 49 oil and gas projects worth $100 billion (80% of which projected to be attracted from foreign funding) to foreign companies based on IPC. Meanwhile, IPC is yet to be approved by the National Supreme Security Council. According to IPC, foreign companies can become the projects’ operators and own a percentage of produced oil as far as the field is active. IPC is very similar to Iraq’s oil agreements, which pay cash money per an extracted barrel for foreign company as far as the field produces oil. During 2007-2017, Iraq’s oil output increased by 2.5 times to 4.4 million barrels per day (mb/d) thanks to new oil contract model, while Iran’s output remained the same at 3.85 mb/d. The most complicated issue for Iran is that about 80 percent of its active fi