Iranian tourism official Mohammad-Ebrahim Larijani said on Monday that Iran has given a priority to attract the Chinese tourists.

Mohammad-Ebrahim Larijani, the director of advertising and marketing office of the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, said, ‘One of the duties of the marketing and advertising office is tourism awareness by organizing tours to introduce Iran’s tourism capabilities and the tourist sites of the other countries.’
Iran has the largest resource bases for cultural, natural and historical sites in the world and is among the leading countries in terms of its potential for attracting foreign tourists.

He said that in order to achieve the goal, we host eight Chinese tour operators and tourism industry activists and such a procedure will continue until the end of the Iranian year.

Larijani said that Chinese tourism industry activists got acquainted with the capacities of the provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Yazd, Fars, and East Azarbaijan, and that China is one of the first priorities of the target markets of Iran tourism industry, and their acquaintance with Iran Tourism Potentials, has a great influence on cooperation in the field of tourism.

‘Last year 11 groups of tourists, including 194 tour operators, tourism webloggers, reporter, radio broadcaster, the influential people from different target countries, visited various provinces in the country and became acquainted with the capacities of Iran’s Tourism,’ he said.

‘In the current Iranian year, we are pursuing this action with greater strength; hence, we have hosted a group of people for 11 days in May,’ he said.

The interest of the world Muslims to travel to Iran as pilgrims and pay a visit to the holy shrines and also enjoy its natural sight-seeings and tourist attractions have been the major potential of the tourism industry.

Iranian people are famous for their hospitality and all those who visit Iran appreciate the culture of hospitality Iranians show when they come across the tourists.

About 7.8 million tourists traveled to Iran in the past Iranian year, ended on March 20, 2019, registering 52.5 percent growth compared to the preceding year which was 5.1 million tourists.

”In the past Iranian year sanctions on the tourism sector were also affected by the cancellation or reduction of foreign direct flights, but fortunately the regional markets and China were placed on our agenda to attract foreign tourists and neutralized the effects,” said Ali Asghar Mounesan, the head of Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts and Tourism Organization.

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Azad University of Iran secured ticket to the 3×3 FISU World University League 2019 for the first time in Iran’s history.

The Iranian team earned an 18-14 win over China A in the semifinal of 5th Asian University 3×3 Basketball Championship on Saturday to earn a ticket to the world event.

In the final match, the team conceded a 16-5 defeat to a representative of Chinese Taipei and finished runner-up.

The team had advanced to semis with four consecutive wins against China (14-13), Mongolia (19-12), Chinese Taipei (8-5), and Hong Kong (19-13).

5th Asian University 3×3 Basketball Championship was held in Kinmen, Chinese Taipei from 8-11 May with a total of 20 elite university teams in participation.

The 2019 edition of 3×3 FISU World University League will be held at China’s Xiamen from October 30 to November 03.

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Anissa Syifa Adriana Indonesian female solo traveler write review on Iran:

It has been 3 weeks that I travel around Iran. Tomorrow I am leaving this beautiful country. I am sad. And that statement is even underrated. I haven’t posted any photos in Iran because I don’t feel the need to. I don’t need extravagant photos or excellent Instagram feeds to show you. Traveling for me isn’t about that. Yes, photo captures moment that wont come back or perhaps wont happen again. However, story, is on the other hand is extremely important. I can have the most amazing photo in the world, but without story, there is nothing special about it. I genuinely wish anyone who is reading this will be able to visit, see and experience Iran as one of the most complex countries in the history. I wish that you also get to get out of your familiarity to experience and eventually transform into the real you, the truth of who you are.

And yes, I will come back again this year.

Hi there!
I am Anissa Syifa Adriana, otherwise known as Syifa. I am a conversation connoisseur, Indonesian female solo traveler and make-up enthusiast. I started my first solo traveling in June 2014, a coincidence trip, where it was intended for someone I was very close to in the past. I never regret deciding to go because after that, I never look back.
I decided to leave Indonesia since August 2016, to do a long-term traveling. After being on the road for about 5 months, in January 2017 I was offered to teach English in Yinchuan, Northwest China. Instead of going back home, at that time I went straight to China from Vietnam carrying only the remaining USD 300 that I had in my bank account. Arrived in China for the first time, everything felt so intimidating and foreign at the same time. Since then, I am based in Yinchuan, Northwest China and have been loving it.
Thank you again for watching! I hope you get to enjoy the video as much as I am making it.
Let’s keep it positive. Don’t forget to like, share, comment and subscribe 🙂
Till next time!

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I N S T A G R A M
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Iran’s crude oil exports hit 2,617 mbd in April 2018, a new record since implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) back in January 2016.

The record was gained amid US President Donald Trump’s threats to pull out of the deal that was struck between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries to curb parts of Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for eased sanctions on the OPEC member’s vital economic sectors.

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) exported an average of 2.877 million barrels per day of crude oil and gas condensate during the month to Asian and European markets which was an unprecedented figure since implementation of the JCPOA.

Iran’s traditional oil customers, China, India, South Korea and Japan, bought over 60% of its petroleum cargoes during the month.

China and India alone imported roughly 1.4 mbd from Iran during the month.

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Exports volume for Iran’s crude oil stands at two million and one hundred thousand barrels per day (mb/d) in March 2018. The figure is expected to increase in April 2018.

China and India are the largest buyers of Iranian crude, with more than one million barrels in total.

The figure is expected to reach nearly 1.3 million barrels per day in April, while China and India will maintain their position as the first and second largest oil importers of Iranian crude.

Dutch-British Shell, France Total, Italian ENI and Saras Companies, Greek Hellenic Petroleum and Spain Repsol and Hungary MOL are among Iranian oil customers in Europe.

According to the Oil Ministry’s report, Iran has also exported 400,000 barrels per day of condensates during the March with South Korea was the biggest customer with purchasing half of the amount.

South Korea has requested for more gas condensate from Iran, however, due to increased domestic consumption and its allocation to Persian Gulf Star Oil Co., there is no possibility of realizing South Korea’s demands for it. South Korea now receives about 200,000 barrels of gas condensate per day from Iran.

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Iran, the world’s biggest gas reserve holder (33.5 trillion cubic meters, 18 percent of the total) has increased its gas output significantly and is targeting an output of 1 bcm/d by March 20, 2018.

Iran prefers to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to distant markets including the EU, but no agreement has yet been reached on the construction of plants for the purpose, reported Trend News Agency.

The country’s sole LNG project, the 52-percent completed ‘Iran LNG’ needs an investment of about $8-10 billion and talks with foreign investors haven’t yielded any results so far.

Last year, Managing Director of National Iranian Oil Company Ali Kardor said that Iran is targeting exports of 0.5-2 million metric tons per year (MT/y) of LNG using mini-LNG plants and floating LNG vessels (FLNG) — Iran’s alternative projects to export LNG.

The country has signed memorandum of understandings (MoU) with South Korean Kogas on the development of LNG projects as well as with National Energy Administration of China on developing mini-LNG projects.

However, talks on purchasing or manufacturing floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) vessels in recent months have so far yielded no results.

Now, Kardor says that Iran’s first deal on the construction of a FLNG facility will soon be signed with a Norwegian company.

The 20-year deal is intended to produce 500,000 tons of LNG, Kardor said on October 10, adding that pricing formula of the products will be determined by the Oil Ministry.

He did not disclose the name of the Norwegian firm, but last year it was announced that Tehran is negotiating with Norwegian Golar and Hemla Vantage companies.

Golar owns one of the largest FLNG fleets in the world, while Hemla Vantage was keen to lease a FLNG vessel from a Belgian company, Exmar, to collect and liquefy flaring gas in offshore fields around Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf (the amount of yearly collection and liquidation of flaring gas in Kharg Island can stand at 0.5 MT).

Launching FLNG and mini-LNG facilities will help Iran diversify and expand its natural gas market.

The projects will also grant the country chance to convert its flaring gas (mostly from burning associated gas in the oil sector), which currently amounted at about 11 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y), into LNG.

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Iran broke the 15-year spell of not obtaining any finance from European banks by signing major deals with Austrian and Danish banks to secure funding for its development projects.

The contracts were signed in the Austrian capital of Vienna by an Iranian banking delegation which included representatives of 14 domestic banks headed by Mohammad Khazaei, the president of the Organization for Investment Economic and Technical Assistance of Iran. Deputy Head of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) for Foreign Exchange Affairs Ahmad Araqchi was also a member of the delegation.

The first major finance deal worth €1 billion was signed on Thursday between Austria’s Oberbank and a dozen Iranian banks. The Austrian bank thus became one of the first European financial institutions to break the ice in providing loans for Iranian projects following the removal of Western sanctions in early 2016.

Oberbank, Austria’s seventh-biggest bank, with a balance sheet of roughly €20 billion ($24 billion), signed the deal with 14 Iranian banks at its headquarters in Linz.

President of the Organization for Investment, Economic and Technical Assistance of Iran Mohammad Khazaei (2nd L) and Oberbank’s Chief Executive Franz Gasselsberger (2nd R) attend a press conference following the signing of a major finance deal between 14 Iranian banks and the Austrian bank in Vienna on September 21, 2017.

The move was groundbreaking particularly given that many banks — mainly those from Europe — are still standing away from Iran’s funding prospects over fears that they may fall afoul of remaining US sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Officials in Tehran are hoping that this would set the stage for similar moves by other European banks in the near future.

The Iranian signatories included veteran private banks such as Parsian Bank, Saman Bank, Eqtesad Novin Bank, Bank Parargad, Karafarin Bank and the newly established Middle East Bank. Others were former state banks that were privatized over the past few years such as Bank Melli Iran, Bank Mellat, Bank Sepah, Tejarat Bank, Bank of Industry and Mine, Export Development Bank of Iran, Refah Bank and Keshavarzi Bank.

The agreement which envisages a funding ceiling of €1 billion covers projects by Austrian companies in Iran’s production and development projects lasting more than two years.

Speaking on the sidelines of the signing ceremony, Oberbank’s Chief Executive Franz Gasselsberger said, “Today was a great day in the two countries’ relations as this was the first finance deal between a European bank and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although the negotiations on the deal took long for several months, the outcome was quite favorable and satisfying for both sides.”

He added the contract will prepare the ground for Austrian companies and industries in different sectors, particularly health and infrastructure, to invest in Iranian projects and export products and modern technologies to the Middle Eastern state.

“In case on some day in the future, we look back at this day, we will realize that this contract has served as a turning point for the two sides to deepen their relations.”

Gasselsberger said Iran’s economy, in addition to those in Austria and other European countries, is extremely attractive for the entire world as the Middle Eastern state has a hardworking and smart young generation that can create great opportunities for their own country and other nations.

“There must be a win-win situation for Iran and international companies. Nevertheless, we should not forget about political aspects.”

Earlier in September, Gasselsberger told Reuters that the agreement covered projects by Austrian companies in areas that were previously under sanctions.

“We have very concrete projects in the fields of infrastructure, rail, health, hospital construction, factory building, photovoltaics, hydro power,” he had stressed.

Export credit guarantees covering 99 percent of a project’s volume will be provided by the Oesterreichische Kontrollbank, the main Austrian body that issues them, Reuters added.

“The sticking point was obtaining an additional guarantee from the Iran,” Gasselsberger said. “We negotiated with the Iranian central bank but the guarantee is evidently coming from the Iranian Finance Ministry.”

President of the Organization for Investment, Economic and Technical Assistance of Iran Mohammad Khazaei (C) at the signing ceremony of a finance deal worth €500 million with representatives (R) of Denmark’s Danske Bank in Vienna on September 21, 2017.

Deal with Denmark’s Danske

The other finance contract, very similar to the one with the Austrian bank, was also signed on Thursday, between the Iranian team and Denmark’s Danske Bank.

The deal is worth €500 million and sees 10 Iranian banks on the receiving end. Following the contract the Danish bank became the second European lender to ink such an agreement with Iran.

The Iranian signatories to the agreement were Saman Bank, Bank Mellat, Tejarat Bank, Bank Melli Iran, Bank of Industry and Mine, Bank Sepah, Bank Pasargad, Eqtesad Novin Bank, Keshavarzi Bank, and Parsian Bank.

They will act as the agent banks, providing civil projects in Iran with the Danish fund, according to an announcement by the website of the Central Bank of Iran.

Danske Bank, founded in 1871 and headquartered in Copenhagen, is the largest bank in Denmark and a major retail bank in the northern European region with over five million retail customers. It was number 454 on the Fortune Global 500 list for 2011.

MoU on infrastructural projects

In addition, the Iranian delegation also signed an MoU late on Thursday with the EKF Bank of Denmark to finance infrastructural projects in Iran.

The memo will make it possible to finance Iranian projects in various sectors later.

The deals with Oberbank and Danske came on the heels of a similar move between China’s CITIC Group and a consortium of Iranian banks to provide loans worth a collective of $10 billion for the country’s infrastructure projects.

Iran had also in late August secured an €8-billion credit line from South Korea’s Eximbank — what was seen as the country’s biggest loan deal since the removal of sanctions against it in early 2016.

Accordingly, officials in Seoul said the deal would finance projects in Iran by companies from South Korea.

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German industrial group Siemens is about to undertake financing rail and power plant projects worth 3 billion euros in Iran, a senior Iranian official says.

“On a trip to Germany, we had discussions about Siemens’ participation in Iran’s railway and power plant projects,” Deputy Minister of Road and Urban Development for International Affairs Asghar Fakhriyeh-Kashan said on Tuesday.

In the rail sector, Iran is going to buy a number of wagons from Siemens for use on a high-speed line between Tehran, Qom and Isfahan, he said. Siemens will also cooperate on providing signaling equipment and installing communication signs.

“Through financing a number of construction projects, Siemens plans to enter into a joint venture with Iran’s MAPNA company both in the power plant and locomotive manufacturing sector in order to boost domestic production,” he said.

Last month, the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM) signed a $1.5 billion deal to finance the electrification of a high-speed rail line between the Iranian cities of Tehran and Mashhad.

EXIM’s Vice President Sun Ping said in Tehran that the institution had provided loans for 26 Iranian projects in the electricity, petrochemicals, non-ferrous metals, oil and gas sectors, worth $9 billion.

China Railway Group Limited (CREC) is carrying out the $1.8 billion electrification of the high-speed rail link between Tehran, Qom and Isfahan.

Iran has announced plans to splurge up to $25 billion over the next 10 years on the modernization and expansion of its railway network.

Siemens was one of the first major companies to agree on a deal with Iran after the lifting of sanctions in January 2016, signing a $1.6 billion memorandum of understanding on Iran’s rail infrastructure and a long-term roadmap with MAPNA on the power sector.

The agreement included a license for manufacturing F-class gas turbines in Iran, under which more than 20 gas turbines and associated generators will be delivered over the next four to five years.

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Iran says a host of European giants are bidding for the development of its South Azadegan oil field – which was once considered as the world’s biggest oil find after it was discovered over 15 years ago.

Nouroddin Shahnazizadeh, the managing director of the Petroleum Development and Engineering Company of Iran, told the domestic media that the leading European bidders for the project include Total (France), Shell (UK/Hollande), Eni (Italy), Wintershall (Germany), Rosneft (Russia), OMV (Austria) and Maersk (Denmark).

Shahnazizadeh added that several Asian companies including CNPC and Sinopec (China), ONGC (India), Pertamina (Indonesia), Petronas (Malaysia) and PTTP (Thailand) would also participate in a tender over South Azadegan.

The official said officials from the bidding companies had visited Iran for three days to become fully aware about the conditions of the project. Almost a dozen of them, he added, had been even taken to visit the project site.

Nevertheless, Shahnazizadeh did not indicate when the tender over South Azadegan would be held.

Iran has repeatedly postponed the tender over the giant field which it jointly shares with Iraq.

Reuters quoted an unnamed Iranian official as saying in June that the bidding over the project had been delayed by another few months.

This, the unnamed official told Reuters, was meant to allow energy companies more time to study the field.

Iran discovered Azadegan oil field in 1999 in what was the country’s biggest oil find in decades. The country accordingly teamed up with Inpex to push the project toward development. However, the Japanese company later quit the project in what appeared to be the result of US sanctions against Iran.

The NIOC later divided the project into South Azadegan and North Azadegan and both were awarded to China’s CNPC when Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) was in office.

The media reported in 2014 that Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh had sidelined CNPC from South Azadegan due to its protracted delays in developing the field.

South Azadegan is believed to hold an in-place oil reserve of about 33.2 billion barrels and its recoverable resources estimated at about 5.2 billion barrels.

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Farhad Daneshvar: President Hassan Rouhani in an addressing to the parliament on August 20, said that drawing $100 billion in foreign investment to develop Iran’s oil industry is among the oil minister’s main tasks in his second term.

“There is bad news and good news,” believes Chris Cook, a strategic market consultant, who also formerly headed the International Petroleum Exchange.

“The bad news is that the Trump administration is intent on making Iranian access to dollars — whether dollar payments or dollar investment via equity funding or debt financing — to all intents and purposes impossible, notwithstanding anything in the JCPOA,” Cook said responding to Trend query regarding the Islamic Republic’s capability to draw foreign investment to renew the country’s oil and gas industry.

“The good news is that it is completely possible for trillions of dollars worth of investment to be made in Iran and in neighboring countries without using dollars at all. This is because accounting/pricing — or keeping score — of transactions in dollars is very different from using the dollar clearing system to repay dollar debts or repatriate dollar profits on investment,” he added.

Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has in recent years been engaged in updating the long-standing ‘Energy Diplomacy’, developed during the former president Mohammad Khatami’s administration, Cook reminded, adding that this ‘smart energy policy’ instrument consisted of energy swaps, such as the Caspian oil swap (flows of Caspian crude oil into northern Iran, exchanged for flows of crude oil delivered out of the Persian Gulf).

“In addition to reactivation of these and similar swaps, perhaps the most remarkable — and most important — ‘Energy Diplomacy’ was the recently contracted South Pars 11 investment by Total, through which 20 years’ investment of technology, skills and experience will be swapped for a flow of condensate. The outcome is firstly a ‘smart swap’ of intellectual value for the value of carbon fuels, and secondly, through the participation of Chinese investors the deal provides 20 years’ security of condensate demand for Iran and 20 years’ security of condensate supply for China,” Cook suggested.

“The point is that such smart swaps will — within a suitable networked market platform or ‘energy clearing union’ — enable many hundred billion dollars worth of intellectual and other resources required by Iran to be swapped for many hundred billion dollars worth of carbon fuels supplied by Iran.

“Since such swaps do not take place on the oil market platform dominated by the US, they do not require settlement in dollars through the US dollar clearing system from which Iran is effectively excluded.”

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