Iran said on Saturday that it had started negotiations with several Italian companies to work over drilling projects in what could be the first engagement of European oil corporations in the country’s oil industry.

Mohammad-Reza Katidi, the vice president of the National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC), told reporters that the negotiations have been held with several subsidiaries of Italy’s oil giants Eni. 

Katidi said a basic agreement has been signed with the companies, adding that it will be made operational as soon as the sanctions against Iran are lifted.  

Elsewhere in his remarks, the NIDC chief said his company is also negotiating with Iraq and Oman to take up projects in the oil and gas industries of those countries.

He added that talks to take up drilling jobs in Libya have been suspended due to the deteriorating security situation in the country. 

Eni was among a series of international players that entered the Iranian oil industry in the 90s. It partnered with Iran’s Petropars over the development of Phases 4 and 5 of Iran’s South Pars energy hub.  Its other projects included the development of Darkhovin, Doroud and Balal oil fields. 

Nevertheless, it had to quit all projects in Iran as the US-engineered sanctions became tighter. 

In December 2013, a few months after the formation of the new Iranian administration by President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s Oil Minister named Eni among a list of seven international energy giants that he said wants back in Iran’s oil industry. Others were Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, BP, Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips. 

In early December, when Iran was hosting an international conference to introduce its new format of oil sector contracts, Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said his company was studying the prospects to return to Iran’s oil and gas projects in light of the removal of sanctions against Iran as well as the reforms that the country had announced in its oil sector deals.