Oil major Total has announced that despite pressure it is negotiating with Iranian authorities over an important gas contract.

“We are still in touch with the authorities on Pars LNG and talks are advancing very slowly,” Yves-louis Darricarrere, head of the company’s exploration and production operations, said Thursday.
In September 2008, Total’s chief executive had denied that the French company withdrew from Iran’s energy projects, saying it wants to remain in the country.
“We are developing the Doroud project in the Kharg Island which produces about 120,000 barrels of oil per day,” Christophe de Margerie had said.
He said Total was also involved in an energy project in the city of Saveh, which lies about 100km south of Tehran.
“We are still present in Iran and we want to remain there,” he said.
According to Darricarrere, talks with Iranian authorities on new projects have not borne fruit and that a decision to invest was still far off.
“We need to continue to make studies on how to design (the plant) and what will be the costs. But we are very far from being mature enough to make an investment decision,” he said.
Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said last year that Iran would develop energy projects in South Pars with or without the help of foreign firms.
Total has been reluctant to invest in new projects in Iran due to sanctions imposed on the country by the United States and the UN Security Council over its ongoing uranium enrichment work.
(Source: Press TV)