[en] The Iranian economy and political situation have undergone radical changes since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The excesses of the early years of the revolution have gradually given way to moderation and a more pragmatic economic policy--based on the principles of the free market. The petroleum policy, as a subset of the economic policies, has been somewhat affected by the political and economic developments in Iran. The petroleum policy has changed from a position of no foreign participation to a position that includes a desire for foreign participation, the text of a model contract, and an attempt to introduce new technologies in the upstream sector. This report provides an overview of the key issues facing the Iranian oil industry and the economic context in which the oil industry is operating in Iran. It describes the evolution of policies meant to move the oil industry toward the free market; it discusses Iran's oil trading partners, the outlook for refining and project investments, and current and likely future developments in the natural gas and petrochemical sectors. In short, the report provides an up-to-date assessment of the Iranian petroleum sector and its likely evolution in the future

[en] This report discusses the following: (1) An overview of major issues in the downstream oil sector, including oil demand and product export availability, the changing product consumption pattern, and refineries being due for major investment; (2) Recent upstream developments in the oil and gas sector in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela; (3) Recent downstream developments in the oil and gas sector in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, and Venezuela; (4) Pipelines in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico; and (5) Regional energy balance. 4 figs., 5 tabs

[en] This paper is concerned with application of artificial neural network (ANN) to the ring compression test for simultaneous determination of the flow curve of the material and the friction factor. The developed ANN model was trained using data from 700 finite element (FE) simulations of the ring test. The load curve of this test and the final internal diameter of the sample are the inputs for this ANN model and the outputs are the strength coefficient, strain hardening exponent and the friction factor. It was found that the outputs of the developed ANN model were in good agreement with the experimental results

[en] In this paper, experimental and numerical investigations on mechanical behaviors of SS304 stainless steel under fully reversed straincontrolled, relaxation, ratcheting and multiple step strain-controlled cyclic loading have been performed. The kinematic and isotropic hardening theories based on the Chaboche model are used to predict the plastic behavior. An iterative method is utilized to analyze the mechanical behavior under cyclic loading conditions based on the Chaboche hardening model. A set of kinematic and isotropic parameters was obtained by using the genetic algorithm optimization approach. In order to analyze the effectiveness of this optimization procedure, numerical and experimental results for an SS304 stainless steel are compared. Finally, the results of this research show that by using the material parameters optimized based on the strain controlled and relaxation data, good agreement with the experimental data for ratcheting is achieved