Iran has announced a plan to build a 1.8-billion-euro oil refinery in Spain as recent sanctions relief allows Tehran to resume oil delivery to Europe, Spain’s foreign minister has said.
José Manuel García-Margallo, quoted by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, said the planned refinery would produce 120,000 b/d of oil.
The paper said an Iranian delegation travelled to Spain on January 28 and held talks with Spanish officials for future cooperation.
National Iranian Oil Refining and Distribution Company (NIORDC) plans to team up with Spain’s Magtel for the construction of refinery in the southern port city of Algeciras.
NIORDC and Magtel have signed a memorandum to assign feasibility studies on the project to an international auditing firm.
Last November, Abbas Kazemi, Chief Executive of NIORDC, said Iran was mulling a plan to build or buy refineries in other countries in order to guarantee long-term sale of its crude oil.
He noted that investing in overseas refineries is one of the most common ways used by oil producing countries to boost crude exports.
At present, some littoral states of the Persian Gulf, which are among world’s major oil exporters, own a remarkable number of oil refineries in American, European and Asian countries, which has greatly increased their clout in global energy markets.
Iran has likewise received proposals for buying or building overseas refineries in Asian, European, African and American countries, none of which has been finalized yet.
The lifting last month of sanctions on Iran following the implementation of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers enables the country to resume crude oil exports to Europe, which had come to a halt in 2012.