Iran To Resume Drilling For Oil And Gas On Caspian Seabed – OpEd

Iran flag and oil platform. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

 May 24, 2025

By Paul Goble

Tehran has announced that it will resume drilling for oil and gas in the Caspian. It stopped such drilling in 1997 and ended its deep-water petroleum operations on that sea in 2014, but it now hopes to actively exploit the more than 600 million barrels of oil and 56.6 billion cubic meters of gas under the seabed in its sector of the Caspian.

In making this announcement, the Iranian oil ministry said that it was open to international cooperation and investment, an indication that this new effort will be expensive and that Iran by itself will have a difficult time achieving its goals (https://casp-geo.ru/iran-vozobnovil-burenie-na-kaspii-spustya-30-let/).

This move is likely to create conflicts between Iran, on the one hand, and Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, on the other, which already have developed Caspian fields near where the Iranians plan to drill (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/05/azerbaijan-expanding-naval-cooperation.html); and it may prompt Tehran to finally ratify the 2018 convention on the division of the sea to defend its claims (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/moscow-tries-to-work-around-tehrans.html).

In both cases, it is likely that Iran will seek to expand its naval capacities there, possibly with the help of the Russian Federation, something that will further exacerbate tensions on the Caspian (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/iran-launches-new-flagship-for-its.html and jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/).  

Paul Goble

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. Most recently, he was director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy. Earlier, he served as vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. He has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Goble maintains the Window on Eurasia blog and can be contacted directly at paul.goble@gmail.com .