Total to Continue Gas Talks with Iran If No Int’l Ban

French oil giant Total SA (TOT) will continue talking with Iran on developing a gas project in the Persian Gulf unless there is an international ban on doing business with the Islamic republic, Total Chairman Thierry Desmarest said Tuesday.

“We’re still in talks to see if we can reach satisfactory terms with the Iranians,” Desmarest said at a breakfast meeting with reporters.

“We’ve made progress, but we haven’t found all the solutions. Once we have, we’ll evaluate the state of the relations between Iran and the international community,” he said.

The company expects to be able to make a decision to start drilling at the South Pars gas field, in Iran’s part of the Persian Gulf “in the next few months,” Yves-Louis Darricarrere, the company’s chief of exploration and production, told reporters two weeks ago on the sidelines of the annual results presentation. The company will weigh geopolitical risks once technical and commercial discussions are over, Darricarrere said.

Dow Jones Newswires