Iran to privatize $90 bln of energy assets: report

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran plans to privatize 47 firms in its energy sector worth $90 billion and set up a holding company for these assets which it will list on four international exchanges, a National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) executive said.

The plan would see the oil and gas companies put under an umbrella group to attract foreign investment, Hojatollah Ghanimi-Fard, director of international affairs at NIOC told the London-based Middle East Economic Digest (MEED).


He said the firms would also be listed in Tehran by 2014.

“We decided the Iranian stock exchange may need to have some support financially from outside stock exchanges, especially for the oil sector, because the money involved is too much (for Iran),” Ghanemi-Fard told the magazine, without naming the firms.

Iran, the world’s fourth-largest crude exporter, tried to revive its stalled privatization plan in 2006 by ordering the floating of 80 percent of several firms. But it said the upstream oil sector and key banks would remain in state hands.

Reuters