A consortium connected to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard has been awarded two giant gas development projects. The semiofficial Mehr news agency quotes Mahdi Fakoor, a senior Oil Ministry official, saying that Khatam-ol-Anbia will develop Halgan and Sefid Baghoon gas fields in southern Iran.
Khatam-ol-Anbia, considered the Revolutionary Guard's most important financial unit, is currently the largest contractor of government projects in Iran. The Guard, which was created after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to defend Iran's clerical rule, has become a vast military-based conglomerate, amassing a network of economic and political power that extends to virtually every aspect of life in Iran.