The Iranian new year, Norouz, is approaching. Visiting relatives is a fundamental activity that Iranian families do during the Norouz holidays. When visiting relatives, guests are entertained with fruits and more importantly with mixture of nuts, known as Ajil, in Farsi.
However, this year prices of nuts have gone up between 200 to 400 percent, particularly pistachios prices. It is partly because of the unexpected cold weather at the beginning of last summer in some areas which ruined 80% of pistachios products. Following the shortage of pistachios, in order not to miss the foreign clients, many producers focused on exporting their products and this pushed prices higher in the mainland as well. Additionally, as Iran imports some of the nuts, such as cashew or sunflower seeds, higher exchange rate caused prices to go up further.
While few weeks before Norouz were always the best period for nuts sellers in Iran, this year all of them observe a heavy fall in purchases.
Oil and gas extraction rate in Iran lies 10% below the average global rate, says Iran National Oil Company (INOC).
There are 125 oil and 59 natural gas fields in Iran. However, nearly 200 of known reservoirs in these fields still remain undeveloped.
“Increasing the recovery rate from reservoirs depends on several variables; for example what the source rock is made of”, explains Karim Zobeidi, Chief Planning Officer of INOC. “Extracting oil and gas from several hydrocarbon reservoirs in Iran requires advanced and non-conventional extraction methods”.
And this is exactly what the country hoped to obtain after the nuclear deal was reached. However, when the United States pulled out from the deal, the developing projects of southern oil and gas fields in Iran with the French giant, Total were suspended.
According to INOC, so far 42% of petroleum and 10% of natural gas resources in Iran have been extracted.
Iran and Iraq collaborate to develop the Iraq’s power industry. During the visit of a business delegation from Iran to Iraq, Reza Rahmani, Minister of Industry and Trade of Iran signed 22 agreements in various development projects of the power industry. “Synchronizing Iraq’s power network by the end of 2019”, “decreasing the network waste by 30% by the end of 2020” and “replacing Iraq’s power shortage with the Iranian production capacities by the end of 2021” are the main projects on which the two country will cooperate.
With best wishes for a better new Iranian year, we will return to you after Norouz holidays. The next issue will be published on 12 April.
Norouz Mubarak!