He said crude oil blending is another area that the two sides have agreed to engage in joint research and technology development.

The agreement was signed during the state visit to Tehran by South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his South African counterpart were present in the ceremony held to sign the deal in Tehran.

RIPI has long been seeking to develop GTL technology for production of clear fuel and the deal will be a push to scale up its efforts to achieve state-of-the-art methods for production of the fuel.

Crude oil blending is often undertaken to increase the sale price or process-ability of a lower grade crude oil by blending it with a higher grade, higher price crude. The objective is to produce blended crude oil to a target specification at the lowest cost using the minimum higher cost crude oil.