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Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Type |
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Chevron Corporation | NYSE:CVX | NYSE | Common Stock |
Price Change | % Change | Share Price | High Price | Low Price | Open Price | Shares Traded | Last Trade | |
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-0.33 | -0.21% | 160.40 | 160.66 | 157.04 | 160.58 | 11,780,661 | 01:00:00 |
By Benoît Faucon
VIENNA--Sanctions have yet to be lifted on Iran, but signs that Western oil executives are hungry to do business there were evident this week at a stately hotel a few blocks from the Danube River.
Called the Second South Caspian Region Petroleum and Energy 2015 Summit, the little-publicized conference drew energy executives from Houston and London to Vienna where they shared coffee and cake with Iranian government officials on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Among the international companies that sent executives was Chevron Corp., according to attendees.
The presence of Western oil officials at an Iran-focused conference was a sign of an emerging new landscape for doing business in the Persian Gulf country now that sanctions could be lifted sometime this year.
Iran and a group of Western nations led by the U.S. agreed this month to a political framework for lifting a crippling set of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. A final deadline for an agreement with specifics has been set for June 30. It isn't clear when sanctions would actually lift.
Western executives have maintained clandestine contacts with Iranian energy officials, and that isn't illegal. But it is still viewed as a sensitive matter.
"Energy companies are clearly interested in Iran," said Peter Harrell, a former top sanctions official at the U.S. State Department and now a principal at consultancy Prospect Global Strategies LLC.
A Chevron spokeswoman said: "We always act in compliance with current laws and regulations."
Some of the secrecy has relaxed since the agreement.
"Before, when I met Iranian officials in Tehran, I had to introduce myself as 'company-X'" for fear of leaks, said one Western European oil official at the Vienna summit.
At this conference, he said, "I finally could say who was my employer."
For Tehran, the conference represented a moment to promote its vast resources. It holds the world's fourth-largest crude oil reserves and the second for natural gas in fields that are relatively easy and cheap to extract compared with more expensive options in the U.S. that require hydraulic fracturing technology.
Iran also needs Western technology, know-how and buyers. Since the last Western oil companies left in 2010, Iran's oil production has fallen by 27% to 2.7 million barrels a day.
Lola Bourget, a spokeswoman for the conference, said its focus wasn't exclusively on Iran and noted that there were discussions about other Caspian countries such as Azerbaijan. The event was closed to the news media.
"This was a business-to-business meeting allowing experts to network," Ms. Bourget said, adding that it wasn't publicized because organizers considered it not relevant to the media.
Speaking outside the conference, Western oil officials said they were still unsure how attractive doing business in Iran will be. Previous terms offered by the Islamic Republic were so tough most Western companies were unable to recoup their costs, though new contracts are being written. Some Western officials are still reeling from their past experience with Iran's punctilious bureaucracy.
But the Vienna summit, held in the Palais Hansen Kempinski Hotel, provided a setting for conversations between Iran and the West.
In the lobby, a group of Western oil executives and an Iranian oil official held forth over silvery teapots and fine china under a giant chandelier. A European executive pulled out a printed Power Point presentation touting his company's technological prowess in extracting heavy oil. He said they could be put to task for aging onshore oil fields Iran is planning to offer to investors in September.
The Iranian official responded that his country was more interested in technologies to developing light oil. The company could offer that too, the executive said.
The exchange was hardly clandestine, taking place within earshot of tuxedo-clad hotel staff.
Still, the executive, in an interview retelling the conversation, didn't want to go on the record with his name and company.
"We want to remain welcome everywhere," he said.
Write to Benoît Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
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