TEHERAN, December 21. /TASS/. The Red barricades shipyard in the Astrakhan region, in the south of Russia, is talks with Iranian companies on joint construction of drill rigs for oil production use in the Persian Gulf, Alexander Ilyichev the shipyard’s director, told TASS on the sidelines of Russian Iranian industrial exhibition.

During the exhibition the parties will sign a memorandum of understanding and after that they will discuss options to finance the project, he said.

"We hope that today will sign an agreement for the joint construction of the rigs aid for explorations and production of hydrocarbons in the waters of the Persian Gulf," - Ilyichev said.

"The volumes are very big, the Iranians name numbers in billions of dollars. The construction cycle is planned not for one year, but for decades," - he said.

The management is negotiating the financing of the project with the Russian export agency Exar.

The Red Barricades shipyard participated in construction of some facilities in the Caspian Sea for Lukoil oil major.

Ilyichev said that the plant is also studying the possibility of building tankers for the National Iranian Tanker Company, a member of the three largest tanker companies in the world, for the transportation of oil from Kazakhstan to Baku, as well as to the north of Iran.

Earlier this month, it was reported that Iranian company Naseem Bahr Kish would acquire a controlling stake in the Solyanka port in the Astrakhan region.

Head of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemyev said that the amount of the deal is 750 million rubles ($10.7 mln).

Naseem Bahar Kish specializes in carriage of goods and passengers by sea.

The port of the Astrakhan region is a staging post on the North-South transport route.

The North-South transport route links central Asia and India with Iran, Georgia, Russia and Europe. While running via Armenia from the south to the north, the route links on to a road to Georgia, which leads to the Black Sea ports of Poti and Batumi and then to Russia and countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the European Union.