Adaptation of Unitization Agreements of Inland Adjacent Petroleum Resources with the Requirements of Iranian

Adopting a combined approach in Iran’s up-stream oil and gas contract or, in other words, continuing the contractor’s contractual presence in the production stage after the exploration and development phase on one hand, and stablishing a direct relationship between the contractors’ revenue and field production level on the other hand can create situations in which the contractors of the adjacent contract areas compete to extract as much as possible from the reservoir. The struggle of governments with the economic and environmental issues caused by these competitions has led to the legislation of some regulations in unitizations of adjacent areas contracts and consequently the Inclusivity of the Unitization and Unit Operating Agreements. The conventional tariff model proposed by the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators can be considered as an attempt to gather the governing customs in order to develop a standard sample contract. The application of this contractual model in Iran requires the observance of the national law demands such as the mandatory rules of contract law, so from this point of view, acceptance of possibility of concluding these contracts is accompanied by some doubts at the first glance. Legal analysis of challenging points shows that considering some precautions that are discussed in this article lead the contracts to be synchronized with Iranian law requirements.