The chief executive officer of Eni SpA, Italy’s largest oil producer Claudio Descalzi has declared his interest in returning to Iran once sanctions end as long as it can first recover investments made in the country.

Eni has invested in Iran in the early 2000s, focusing on operations around the Persian Gulf. Descalzi however says he needs to find out more about the new contract model on offer, which should be closer to what they have in other countries.

“We started our discussion with Iran but we are more actually discussing about the outstanding issue, outstanding money that we are to recover from the past projects,” Descalzi said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Other oil producers such as BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc have also expressed interest in developing Iran’s reserves, once sanctions over its nuclear program are removed. Oil officials from the country, which reached an accord this month to ease international restrictions on energy industry, will discuss the contracts at a conference in London in December

“Iran in terms of oil and gas is a huge and big country, very interesting, but we need to wait.” Descalzi stated.