Robert “Bob” Dudley, chief executive officer of BP, speaks during the World Gas Conference in Paris on June 2. Dudley said in June the company would be “very much” interested in investing in Iran when sanctions are lifted.
Bloomberg
London
BP officials met with Iranian oil executives late last month in Tehran as the British company seeks to return to the country once sanctions are lifted.
“BP has met with oil industry officials in Iran recently,” a company spokesman said in an e-mail. “The details of those discussions are confidential. We have said for some time that we would be interested in reviewing opportunities in Iran once sanctions permit it.”
Although BP wasn’t part of a business group that travelled to Tehran with UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in August when he opened the British embassy, chief executive officer Bob Dudley said in June the company would be “very much” interested in investing in Iran when sanctions are lifted. The company is “fully in compliance” with sanctions until then, the spokesman said.
Oil producers including BP, which has worked in the Middle East since its inception as the Anglo-Persian Oil Co in 1908, are interested in Iran because it holds the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves and biggest gas deposits, according to the company’s data.
Iran earlier this year came to an agreement with the US and other world powers to curb its nuclear program in exchange for an end to economic sanctions.
Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, plans to sign a deal on exploration and production with Iran following changes in the Gulf nation’s tax laws, the company’s billionaire CEO Vagit Alekperov said on Friday. Lukoil stopped work in Iran as a minority partner in a project called Anaran in 2010 due to sanctions.
Eni, Italy’s largest oil producer, is interested in returning to Iran once sanctions end as long as it can first recover investments made in the country, CEO Claudio Descalzi said on July 30.
Iran plans to increase crude output by 2mn bpd and natural gas production by about 7bn standard cubic feet from about 50 energy projects that will be offered to investors at a conference in Tehran next month, National Iranian Oil Co Managing Director Roknoddin Javadi said in Berlin on Thursday.
Iran plans to increase crude output by 2mn bpd from about 50 energy projects slated for investors at a conference in Tehran next month, National Iranian Oil Co managing director Roknoddin Javadi said.
The package will also aim to boost natural gas production by 7bn standard cubic feet, Javadi said at a conference in Berlin. Oil production is now about 2.8mn bpd, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Iran has the world’s largest gas reserves and the fourth largest oil reserves, according to BP figures.
Iran will need $30bn of investment over five years to boost oil production, starting with about 350,000 barrels of new output next year, Goldman Sachs Group Inc said in a report Thursday. The supplies could keep pressure on oil prices and delay the market’s return to balance, Henry Tarr, a Goldman analyst, said in the report.
“The global oil market will stay bearish in the short to medium term,” Javadi told the Berlin conference.
