Iran, Nigeria agree to cooperate on major oil and gas projects

Iran and Nigeria have signed a key document to expand their cooperation on various oil and gas projects.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on Saturday in Tehran between Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji and Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva.

Owji told reporters after signing the MoU that Iran will help Nigeria expand its oil and gas sector while offering construction and maintenance services for refineries in the African country.

He said Iranian companies will also become active in Nigeria to help the country expand its use of compressed natural gas (CNG) mainly for transportation purposes.

The minister said that Iran will in return seek to use the expertise existing in Nigeria’s petroleum sector to expand its liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector.

Iran has sought to find new markets for its oil and gas engineering services since the country’s petroleum sector came under American sanctions in 2018.

Iranian companies have been awarded contracts to build and refurbish oil refineries in several South American countries.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer and the sixth largest exporter of LNG in the world.

A report by Iran’s Oil Ministry’s news service Shana said Iran will start supplying significant volumes of urea to Nigeria under the MoU signed on Saturday.  

The report quoted Nigeria’s Sylva as saying after meeting Owji that Nigerian companies will commit to LNG projects in Iran as part of the new deal between the two countries.

Sylva said that Nigeria will seek to benefit from the services of Iranian petroleum contractors to expand the upstream sector of its condensate production facilities.