Reza Ardakanian and Alexander Novak met in Moscow on Monday, as heads of Iran-Russia Joint Economic Commission, to discuss development of joint energy investments, the Energy Ministry news portal Paven reported.
The Iranian minister was in Moscow to follow up on past decisions taken during the last joint commission held in Tehran and Isfahan in May.
Iran's Thermal Power Plants Holding Company had signed a contract with Russia’s Technopromexport to build a power plant comprising four units, each to produce 350 MWs, according to Financial Tribune.
Ardakanian and Novak signed an addendum to the contract to be financed by a Russian government loan.
The plant is estimated to cost $2.2 billion. The Russian side will pay 85% of the cost and the rest will come from Iran's Bank of Industry and Mine.
The project will create 3,000 jobs and 500 more will work at the power station as soon as its first unit goes on stream. The plant is planned to come on line in about five years.
Building Blocks
Also in the meeting, Novak called for bilateral cooperation in digital energy, which was welcomed by the Iranian side.
In June, the two neighbors signed a memorandum of understanding to boost energy cooperation, covering oil, gas, petrochemicals, electricity and nuclear power.
Both sides are making efforts to build the legal and infrastructure basis for expanding collaboration and evade the new US sanctions on Iran.
The US re-imposed economic restriction on Iran’s key economic sectors last November after unilaterally pulling out of a 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and six other countries.
Ardakanian invited the Russian minister to participate in the 19th Iran International Electricity Exhibition.
He said Iran’s membership in the Eurasia Economic Union has been finalized and legal formalities have been taken care of so that an interim agreement on free trade between Iran and Eurasia will come into effect next month.
The Eurasian Economic Union is an economic union of states in central and northern Asia and Eastern Europe. The Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union was signed in 2014 by the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, and came into force in 2015.