"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.