Iran signed gas deals worth $14 billion with Malaysia, state television reported on Tuesday, the latest Asian investment in the country.

The deals involved a project to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG) and the development of two gas fields, the television said, without making clear if they were all new or were related to contracts sealed in late 2007.

The ISNA news agency said they were signed on Monday with Malaysia's SKS group, which in December last year struck a multi-billion-dollar gas development contract with Iran, which boasts the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia.

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and SKS, which is linked to tycoon Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, reached a preliminary $16 billion deal in January 2007 to develop the southern Golshan and Ferdows gas fields and build plants to produce LNG.

But a spokeswoman for the National Iranian Gas Exporting Company (NIGEC) said those contracts concerned upstream development of the fields, while the ones signed on Monday evening concerned "midstream" development and an LNG plant.

"Three documents pertaining to the Golshan and Ferdows fields' midstream development were signed last night," she told Reuters, without giving further detail.

Malaysian state oil firm Petroliam Nasional (Petronas) had said in July it was interested in Iran but said it was assessing its involvement in the Pars LNG project because of rising costs. It was not clear if TV was referring to this deal.

Pars LNG is one of several projects that Iran has been planning but which has made limited progress. Iran has been slow to develop exports partly because of US sanctions.

Iran's Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said exports of crude and 120,000 barrels of gas condensates were part of the agreements signed on Monday.

"The development of Golshan and Ferdows gas fields will be based on a buy-back contract, and (it was) also agreed for Malaysia to invest in and build an LNG plant," the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Iran's "buy-back" oil and gas deals have been unpopular with foreign investors. Under such deals, firms hand over operations of fields to NIOC after development and receive payment from oil or gas production for a few years to cover their investment.

Western firms have become increasingly wary of investing in Iran, with some scrapping projects, because of US and UN sanctions imposed over Iran's disputed nuclear programme.
Several Asian companies have stepped in to negotiate deals. - Reuters