Royal Dutch Shell officials have met with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) executives to discuss entering the development of Iran’s slowly developing Kish gas field in the Persian Gulf, energy news agency SHANA reported on September 12.

Of European oil majors exploring opportunities in Iran opened up by the 2016 introduction of the sanctions-lifting nuclear deal, to date only France’s Total has committed to investing in developing Iranian hydrocarbon resources. In July, Iran signed a long-awaited multi-billion-dollar contract with Total and China's China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to develop part of the giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf. Iran has the world’s second largest gas resources and fourth largest oil resources. 

So far, 14 wells have been drilled at the Kish field, located by the Iranian free trade zone island of Kish.

The delegation from Shell, headed by Hand Nijkamp, Shell's VP for Shell Upstream International, Middle East and North Africa, met in Tehran with Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy director for development and engineering at NIOC, and Noureddin Shahnazizadeh, managing director of Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) on September 12 to discuss Shell's proposal for developing Kish Gas Field.

Discovered in 1968, the gas field is located off the southeastern side of the island.

The field holds an estimated 1.9tn cubic metres of natural gas, according to a 2016 estimate made by NIOC, while an additional 500mn barrels of gas condensate and light grade oil could be sourced from the resource over its lifetime.

It mostly contains sweet gas, which contains hydrogen sulphide, and has the potential to produce an additional 4bn cubic metres of natural gas if further successful explorations are concluded.

Earlier, in March, Shahnazizadeh commented: "Royal Dutch Shell is the only foreign company to show interest in developing the Kish Gas Field. Therefore it is likely that we will negotiate and award the field's development contract to Shell in lieu of a tender."

In December 2016, Shell signed three memoranda with NIOC to develop the South Azadegan and Yadavaran oil fields along with Kish.