Lukoil has expressed interest in re-entering the Iran market with the terms of the International Petroleum Contracts (IPCs), likely to be unveiled by October, the company’s CEO was quoted as saying by Iran Daily.

Iran could also pass a law allowing foreign companies to invest in Iranian projects by the end of the year, Vagit Alekperov added, according to the report.

"Based on the latest meetings I had in Vienna during OPEC, it is around September or October this year. It is mostly agreed on, according to my information, but there are minor details left. But as a rule, those details are always where the problems hide," he added.

"We are working on studying Iran, there are territories that are attractive to us, there is preliminary agreement. But Iran today has no law allowing investors to invest in Iran's territory. It has been discussed for nearly three years now, we hope it will be passed at the end of this year, so that we could evaluate it and start working on it," Alekperov said.

"We have two memoranda on zones of interests that we're analyzing. At this point we're just analyzing the data. Of course we are interested in returning to the Anaran project that we used to work on with Statoil," he said.

Lukoil worked at Iran's gigantic onshore Anaran Block along with Norway's Statoil prior to international sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear programme, the report said.

"We today consider exploration projects and projects that require rehabilitation — those that have been launched but haven't reached the planned production level. We are capable of investing today to increase those projects' [flow]," Alekperov said.