Economic Valuation of the Gas Buyback Contracts in South Pars Field through Comparing with Production Sharing Contracts

Signing Oil Contracts with international oil companies for upstream and downstream operations in Iran''s oil industry has a long history. After the discovery of oil، the first international oil contract was signed in Iran. Different types of oil contracts have been used in Iran. In most cases، the adequacy of contracts in terms of economic benefits has raised questions and ambiguities for Iran. To investigate this topic، the gas buyback contracts are evaluated from an economic point of view. In order to assess the results more carefully، these contracts are compared with the Production Sharing Contracts. Phases 2 and 3، and also 4 and 5 of South Pars Gas Field have been selected for this paper. Since these projects have been awarded in the form of buy-back contract، in addition of defining different scenarios، the Production Sharing Contract for the project has been simulated. After finding the best scenario in terms of the production sharing contracts for both projects، we found that for phases 2 and 3 of the South Pars، the Production Sharing Contract and for phases 4 and 5، the buyback contract، are proved to be more favorable for Iran.