Indonesia to Buy Iranian Crude in 2017

Indonesia's Pertamina will buy 1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil, expected to be delivered in the first quarter of 2017, its chief executive Dwi Soetjipto told reporters on Monday. "We will try to bring in for the Cilacap refinery about 1 million barrels for experiment. When we know the result ... we could negotiate for the long term," Soetjipto said, Reuters reported. He also said Pertamina will submit proposals for its plan to purchase stakes in two oil and gas blocks in Iran by the end of February. Last week, Indonesia announced it will import around 550,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas from Iran in 2017, according to a government statement. National Iranian Oil Company and Pertamina have signed a nondisclosure agreement that allows the state-owned Indonesian oil firm to conduct studies on two Iranian oilfields. Under the agreement, Pertamina is to survey Iran's onshore Ab-Teymour and Mansouri oilfields. The agreement is the first step of cooperation between the state-run oil companies of Iran and Indonesia in the upstream oil industry.