Russia’s Biggest Move Yet To Take Control Of The European Gas Market

Russia’s Biggest Move Yet To Take Control Of The European Gas Market

A deal finalized last week to develop Iran's multi-trillion dollar new gas discovery, the Chalous field, will see Russian companies hold the major share in it, followed by Chinese companies, and only then Iranian ones, sources close to the deal exclusively told OilPrice. com. This is despite Chalous's position unequivocally within the Iranian sector of the Caspian Sea, over which the Islamic Republic has complete sovereignty. Billions of dollars in additional capital investment are scheduled to come from financial institutions in Germany, Austria, and Italy, as the indications are that the size of Chalous's gas reserves are even greater now than initially thought. According to one of the senior Russian officials involved in negotiating the deal:"This is the final act of securing control over the European energy market."In context, the wider Caspian basins area, including both onshore and offshore fields, is conservatively estimated to have around 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proven and probable reserves. As exclusively covered and analyzed by OilPrice. com in 2019, Russia was instrumental in manipulating a change in the legal status of the Caspian basins area that meant that Iran's share of the total revenues from