London (Platts)--29 Oct 2015 818 am EDT/1218 GMT

Shell's talks with the Iranian government ahead of the expected lifting of international sanctions on Tehran remain focused on its $2 billion debt with the oil and gas-rich country rather than potential new projects, its chief executive Ben van Beurden said Thursday.

"We remain very interested -- and are keeping a review brief -- on Iran but that's all there is to it," Van Beurden told reporters on a conference call. "Any pragmatic discussions we have with Iranian government and officials is pretty much about the payables that we have outstanding."

Declining to say if there has been any specific progress on talks for potential projects, Van Beurden said Shell is still awaiting details on new contract terms to assess the "risk and rewards" of going back to invest in the country.

"We are interested in Iran because of its geological characteristics. There are a lot of hydrocarbons that can be developed from a value chain perspective...(but) what the government's take is, the risk and rewards on these projects for international investors like ourselves, we don't know at this time," he said.

As part of its talks with Iran earlier this year, Shell discussed its debt of around $2 billion to the National Iranian Oil Company for crude lifted in early 2012 but not paid for due to the imposition of sanctions.

The company must wait for sanctions on Iran to be lifted before it can pay off the outstanding debt. European sanctions on Iranian oil came into force on June 28, 2012.

In July, Shell's CFO Simon Henry said the company is interested in returning to conventional gas projects in Iran, suggesting that the oil major is hoping to return to help develop Iran's giant South Pars project in the Persian Gulf.

Shell ceased upstream activities and suspended new business developments in Iran in 2010, two years after pulling out of the development of phase 13 of the South Pars project, saying it could not meet the Iranian requirements to develop the block quickly.

--Robert Perkins, robert.perkins@platts.com
--Edited by Maurice Geller, maurice.gelller@platts.com

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