Norway's StatoilHydro should complete a project at Iran's giant South Pars gasfield this year and has no further plans for investment in the country for now, a senior executive has said.

But Statoil was negotiating a service contract that would give it operating status for a time over the project to ensure a smooth handover to Iran, said Torgeir Kydland, Statoil's senior vice-president for international exploration and production in the Middle East.

He declined to say how long Statoil would stay as operator, according to a report in our sister newspaper Gulf Daily News.

US and UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, as well as political pressure from Washington, have stopped Western energy companies from signing new deals to exploit the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves.

'We will deliver the project that we have said we will deliver,' Kydland said.

'Beyond that, we have no more concrete action planned for the time being unless the world will change.'

Statoil would start production before the year's end from the third of the three phases at South Pars that it was developing this year, Kydland said. Completion was around five years late.