Ali Akbar Farazi, Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture (ICCIMA) deputy for international affairs, announced that senior executives of Italy’s oil giant, ENI, will arrive in Tehran as part of a business delegation on Tuesday.
ENI will be part of a high-ranking Italian delegation headed by the country’s Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, he added, reported Press TV. Also present in the planned delegation are senior executives of SACE insurance company, Italian banks, automakers, pharmaceutical companies, and water, electricity, oil, gas, and petrochemicals companies.
Farazi explained that ENI had always been a partner to Iran’s oil projects before sanctions were imposed on the country, contributing to the development of phases 4 and 5 of South Pars gas field as well as Darkhoein oil field. “Now that the prospect for the removal of sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic is bright, ENI is willing to return to Iran,” he added.
Previously Eni SpA CEO Officer Claudio Descalzi had told Bloomberg that his company was eager to return to Iran once sanctions were removed. The lingering issue, however, was “outstanding money that we are to recover from the past projects.” Apart from that “Iran in terms of oil and gas is a huge and big country, very interesting, but we need to wait.” He also said that there was the issue of the new contract model that be hoped would be “closer to what we have in other countries.”