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Asghar Fakhriyeh Kashan, Iran’s deputy minister for roads and urban development, has been quoted by the media in Tehran as saying that serious talks are currently underway over the deal, adding that they would lead to “good news” that will be announced within the next two days. 

Fakhriyeh Kashan added that the details of the deal cannot be disclosed at the current juncture adding that its finalization is still pending certain standard technicalities.

Iran Air - the national flag carrier airline of the Islamic Republic – said in early June that it is discussing what is seen as a “historic aircraft purchase deal” with Boeing.

Iran Air CEO Farhad Parvaresh told Reuters that serious talks with Boeing to the same effect are underway, expressing hope that these would lead to an agreement sometime soon.

Reuters added that the volume of the purchase deal with Boeing could be as big as the one that Iran Air sealed with another aviation giant Airbus earlier this year.

Iran signed a major deal worth $27 billion with Airbus in January to purchase 118 planes from the company.  The deal with Airbus was sealed during a state visit to Paris by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. 

Apart from Airbus and Boeing, Iran is also negotiating with several other global aviation giants over the purchases of planes including Bombardier and Embraer.

Iran has a fleet of 250 aircraft, of which officials say 90 are grounded due to the economy or missing parts.

They also say that 80 percent of Iran’s aviation fleet will need to be renewed in the next decade and that growth could add even more jets to Iran's shopping list.

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"The consignment of rail worth $150 million would be sent to Iran from India in July," a top official told PTI after Iran's Ambassador to India Gholamreza Ansari called on Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday.

The consignment of rails will be shipped by steel companies, the official said, adding that both Gadkari and Ansari deliberated on taking further the historic pact between the nations on the strategic Chabahar Port in southern Iran which will give India access to Afghanistan and Europe bypassing Pakistan.

The pact to develop the Chabahar port and other infrastructure was inked last month during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Persian Gulf nation. Gadkari last month said that India would invest billions of dollars in setting up industries — ranging from aluminum smelter to urea plants — in Iran's Chabahar Free Trade Zone.

Also, railway PSU IRCON will build a rail line at Chabahar to move goods right up to Afghanistan. The rail links are being built so that the land-locked Afghanistan can get access to the Iranian port as an alternative to the Pakistani port of Karachi.

The official said that a meeting is also "scheduled next month between shipping minister and his Iranian counterpart to develop a work plan for industrial needs and investments needed for Chabahar Free Trade Zone". The focus will be setting up industries in the Chabahar Free Trade Zone.

Besides the bilateral pact to develop Chabahar Port for which India will invest $500 million, a trilateral agreement on transport and transit corridor has also been signed by India, Afghanistan and Iran, which the prime minister said could "alter the course of the history of the region".

Also, Gadkari has been stressing that the distance between Kandla and the Chabahar port is less than the distance between New Delhi and Mumbai and the pact would enable India quick movement of goods first to Iran and then onwards to Afghanistan and Russia through a new rail and road link.

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Iran could also pass a law allowing foreign companies to invest in Iranian projects by the end of the year, the CEO of Russia's second biggest producer added on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. However, Alekperov was quick to point out that until the law is passed no concrete steps would be taken, Platts reported.

"Based on the latest meetings I had in Vienna during OPEC, it is around September or October this year. It is mostly agreed on, according to my information, but there are minor details left. But as a rule, those details are always where the problems hide," the Lukoil CEO said.

"We are working on studying Iran, there are territories that are attractive to us, there is preliminary agreement. But Iran today has no law allowing investors to invest in Iran's territory. It has been discussed for nearly three years now, we hope it will be passed at the end of this year, so that we could evaluate it and start working on it," Alekperov said. It is the key law for investors to gain access to Iran's oilfields.

Lukoil, which had been a key player in Iran before international sanctions were imposed, has yet to return, unlike some of the other key oil companies such as Total which quickly struck up a deal this year to take Iranian crude.

Anaran interest

"We have two memoranda on zones of interests that we're analyzing. At this point we're just analyzing the data. Of course we are interested in returning to the Anaran project that we used to work on with Statoil," he said.

Lukoil worked at Iran's gigantic onshore Anaran Block along with Norway's Statoil prior to international sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear program.

Alekperov cautioned that the terms had to be right to allow Lukoil to reinvest.

"We today consider exploration projects and projects that require rehabilitation — those that have been launched but haven't reached the planned production level. We are capable of investing today to increase those projects' [flow]," he added.

Iran plans fewer than 20 projects as part of the first tenders for the IPC. It has said in the past that it will have its IPC ready and approved in June to soon put out the tenders.

Earlier this month, Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh stressed it was very lucrative for international energy companies such as Total, Lukoil and Eni to invest in Iran. "Oil [production] in our region is very low. In Iran, it costs a maximum of $10 per barrel.

"First we announce the fields and ask companies to come forward and [declare] their interests in any of those fields. We evaluate the companies based on their technological and financial capabilities and then we put the tender documents at their disposal."

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