05-08-08 Iran says it plans to open some of its oil and gas fields to foreign investment to help boost output by 2015 to 5.3 mm bpd.
"Iran has made new discoveries in the past two, three years," Seifollah Jashnsaz, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said in Tehran. "Many oil and gas fields are in line for development."

The 10 international oil and gas tenders will be held in the current Iranian calendar year ending March 20, 2009, he said.
The announcement comes after Mahmoud Mohaddes, NIOC's director for exploration, said that Iran had found four new oil fields this year that hold in-place combined reserves of nearly 3.7 bn barrels.

The announcement is seen as a step toward materializing objectives set in the country's five-year economic development plan.
Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said in July that Iran plans to boost its crude oil output by the end of the fifth five-year economic plan (2010-2015) from the current 4.2 mm bpd to 5.3 mm.