BP will look for upstream opportunities in Iran once sanctions on the oil producing country are lifted, but Tehran's intentions for its new oil contracts are unclear, BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Wednesday.
Dudley also told reporters he was wary of rushing into Iranian projects until the situation with the sanctions regime was clear, Platts reported.
"If the sanctions are relaxed in a way that allows us to go work there, obviously we would explore opportunities in Iran. We are not actively in that phase," he said.
The BP chief said agreements laid out are quite complicated and actually no one really knows all the details yet, stressing that as a company working all over the globe, it would be natural for us to work in Iran.
"There's some speculation out there—various things, maybe service contracts, or production sharing agreements, or tax and royalty—but actually it is not clear to us what their plans are on contracts," he said.
Once sanctions are lifted, Iran hopes to attract top international oil companies to its upstream sector to help it develop its vast reserves, which total about 157 billion barrels of oil and 1,200 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Iran held initial talks with oil giants, including BP, Shell, Total and Eni, on potential projects earlier this year.
Iran's top oil official told a Vienna conference last week the country has identified nearly 50 oil and gas projects worth $185 billion to be launched by 2020.
Iran's Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia said the country's Integrated Petroleum Contract—under which new projects will be awarded—"will address some of the deficiencies of the old buyback contract".
Representatives from BP were present at the Vienna conference organized by the Tehran-based Ravand Institute and with the participation of several European chambers of commerce.
"We've been really careful. We want to make sure that there is absolutely nobody that can accuse us of violating the sanctions. We have had enough trouble with regulators," he said.
Iran is due to present its opportunities in upstream oil and gas at a London event later this year.
