IRAQ - Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh.

Deputy oil minister and President of NPC since August 1997, Dr. Namatzadeh is prominent in the Khatami administration. He and Minister Zanganeh have had a long friendship, with Nematzadeh having headed the state's Power and Transmission Company Tavanir in the late 1980s - Tavanir being under the energy ministry. Now he is also a member of the Supreme Economic Council (SEC), the top decision maker for the country's major projects.

An efficient administrator and a good engineer, Dr. Nematzadeh is a hard worker presiding over a rapid expansion of the petrochemical industry. He is ambitious and eager for this sector to become the third biggest foreign exchange earner next to oil and gas. The petrochemical sector now is open to foreign capital and technology, with foreign companies becoming partners in major new plants (see DT No. 15).

Dr. Nematzadeh is an Azeri. He was born in Tabriz (eastern Azerbaijan province) in 1945. He got a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Tabriz University, a master's degree in industrial management from Tehran University and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He left theological studies in 1977 and joined the Khomeini movement. After the revolution he became in charge of an inspection committee at the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry; director of the Iran National Co.; labour minister after the fall of Bazargan's government in late 1979; industry and mines minister from September 1980 to August 1981; CEO of Tavanir from February to August 1989; and industry minister from August 1989 to late 1995. In the latter position, he was in charge of both light and heavy industries which were merged in September 1994. He then began a drive to privatise both light and heavy industries that were under his ministry.

Dr. Nematzadeh is a nice person eager to get the number of foreign companies involved in the petrochemical sector to increase. In 1998 NPC hired UK-based Kleinwort Benson - whose Iranian research director Mehdi Varzi has maintained links with Tehran - to act as financial adviser for a long list of projects offered for foreign companies to launch in Iran. These include huge petrochemical complexes being built at Bandar Asaluyeh, promoted by NPC's London-based external arm NPC Int'l. Dr. Nematzadeh has promised foreign companies that Iran's investment laws will be amended and that the government would offer guarantees against state seizure. But there is a limit to what he can offer, in view of restrictions usually imposed by the Council of Constitutional Guardians, which can approve or veto any move by parliament.

Prominent among Dr. Nematzadeh's aides is Mohammad Hassan Peyvandi, head of planning and development at NPC. Peyvandi is chairman of the Iran Petrochemical Forum (IPF), which is holding important annual conferences in Tehran. The 7rd Annual IPF is to be held in the Iranian capital on May 7-8, 2005. These conferences are attended by a big number of petrochemical companies and have helped NPC a great deal in promoting its projects.

Mahmoud Mohaddes, the director in charge of exploration at NIOC, is one of the leading experts in the national oil company. He takes pride in the impressive number of big oil and gas discoveries made by NIOC in recent years, including super-giant oilfields which have put Iran on top of the list of world petroleum discoveries (see Gas Market Trends No. 13). His Exploration Directorate in early 2003 opened up the Persian Gulf waters to a licencing round. This followed conclusion in 2002 of a 2D seismic survey of 100,000 sq km by a consortium under Global Geo Services of Norway. Data from the survey, commissioned in 1999, have been bought by a number of companies interested in Iran's offshore, including Total, Agip and Statoil.

Mohaddes' directorate in mid-2004 raised its estimate of Iran's recoverable oil reserves to more than 132 bn barrels, from 96 bn a few years earlier. The estimate of proven recoverable reserves of natural gas were raised from 24 TCM to more than 28 TCM. It said South Pars alone accounted for about half of the gas reserves. In February 2003, Minister Zanganeh said oils in place in various parts of Iran totalled 500 bn barrels.

Asadollah Salehiforouz: The deputy oil minister for Caspian affairs since late 2004, Salehiforouz was then replaced by Akbar Torkan as CEO of Pars Oil and Gas Co. (POGC). Salehiforuz had been running this fast-expanding NIOC subsidiary since its creation in late 1998 (see profile of the South Pars ventures in Gas Market Trends No. 14).

Now aged 58, Salehiforouz now has to develop the Caspian Republics Oil Swap (CROS) initiative, a very difficult task as the National Iranian Oil Refining & Distribution Co. (NIORDC) in late cancelled a $500m project to upgrade the Tehran and Tabriz oil refineries. That project was to enable the two refineries to process crudes from Central Asian countries that were to be shipped to Iran's Caspian terminal of Neka and pumped to the two plans by pipeline.

Until December 1998, Salehiforouz was running the Calgary office of Kala, NIOC's purchasing arm. He was brought back from Canada by Minister Zanganeh to head POGC. During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Salehiforouz was in charge of NIOC's development of the major Nar and Kangan onshore gas fields. Later he became responsible for keeping Iran's oil refineries running despite raids by the Iraqi air force. In 1991, he was made deputy oil minister and managing director of NIGC, a post he kept until he moved over to the Kala office in Calgary in 1996. Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, Salehiforouz as an engineer worked at the Russian-built steel plant in Isfahan. He became managing director of the National Iranian Steel Co. after the revolution.

Mostafa Khoee, made CEO of PetroIran Development Co. (Pedco) in November 1998, is another prominent executive working closely with Dr. Mir-Moezi. An Azeri, Khoee formerly was head of Pedec, a position he took in 1994. Until 1994 he was managing director of the Iranian Offshore Oil Co. In his present post, Pedco acts as a general management subsidiary of NIOC in charge of upstream activities in Iran.

Last month NIOC gave Pedco the $900m contract to develop the onshore Bangestan field, a major project for which bidders had included Shell, Total and BP. NIOC also gave Pedco the contract to develop the oil layer beneath the offshore South Pars field (see Gas Market Trends No. 14). NICO finances Pedco's projects.

Khoee graduated from Baghdad University in neighbouring Iraq in 1975. A soft-spoken executive but a tough nut to crack, he has held key positions in NIOC since the revolution of 1979. Now aged 55, he is in charge of one of NIOC's flagship subsidiaries, created to streamline the oil sector. Pedco in 2002 signed a $400m BBC with NIOC to upgrade the offshore Foroozan/Esfandiar oilfields in the Persian Gulf. This was one of a series of projects taken on by Pedco.

Operating out of a high-rise building in central Tehran, Pedco has so far escaped the notoriety that has dogged other companies floated off by NIOC, particularly PetroPars whose founders have faced court cases over alleged corruption and mismanagement.

Pedco lacks the resources to match its high ambitions. But it still benefits from the positive image it has gained since its creation in 1999 and has drawn a great deal of support from NICO's financing assistance (see background in Vol. 60, DT & Gas Market Trends No. 16).