Gazprom said in a statement that its chief executive Aleksei Miller and the Iranian deputy minister for oil, Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, met today in Moscow to discuss creating a joint venture to explore and develop oil and gas fields, and to transport and sell natural gas.
Russia has close business ties with Iran and is also building a nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr in Iran.
Sergei Kiriyenko
, the head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, said today that work on the plant is on schedule to be completed in 2007.
The meeting between Miller and Hosseinian came a day after the Iranian oil minister, Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, threatened to disrupt the world's oil supply if Iran is sanctioned for its nuclear program.
(RIA Novosti, AP)