Katouzian said that the two sides discussed mutual cooperation during a visit to Iran last month by an Indonesian parliamentary delegation.
He went on to say that, during their stay, the Indonesian parliamentarians called for the RIPI to assess the viability of reviving more than 1,000 dead oil wells in the country.
The official added said that the Indonesian team also requested that the RIPI train the country’s experts and establish an oil industry research center in the Southeast Asian nation.
“Preliminary talks have been held on cooperation between Iran’s Research Institute of Petroleum Industry and Indonesia, but no final agreement has been reached yet,” he said.
He pointed out that the Iranian research institute has also cooperated with Iraq and Sudan in the fields of training and upstream oil projects.
Indonesia was a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but it dropped out of OPEC in 2009 after a steady decline in its production due to deficient infrastructure and paucity of investment.
