NEW DELHI—India has raised the issue of getting back an oil field from Iran, where domestic companies have invested but hadn’t begun producing natural gas because of international sanctions against Tehran, according to a top government official.

ONGC Videsh Ltd., the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Ltd., India’s flagship exploration firm along with Oil India Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., had invested about $100 million in Farzad-B field. The companies have explored and discovered oil and gas in 2008. The oil field holds about 13 trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves.

“The production could not be started because of the sanctions” against Tehran, the official at India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas told The Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity.

New Delhi has also conveyed its concerns regarding investments and wanted Tehran to reallocate the block back to the Indian investors in the wake of upcoming exploration rules that could put those investments in jeopardy.

“Iranian officials have said they would examine India’s request and now the talks will begin between executives of Indian companies and National Iranian Oil Company,” he said.

The diplomatic-level negotiations, which took place this past weekend, comes weeks after Iran and the western powers had reached an initial agreement where Tehran would allow extensive monitoring of its nuclear facilities and in return of get the sanctions against it removed.

ONGC Chairman D.K. Sarraf said the talks were aimed at keeping the two sides engaged on the issue.

Oil India chairman S. K. Srivastava directed queries about the recent round of talks to ONGC Videsh.

“We had good discussions,” said N.K. Verma, managing director of ONGC Videsh. “I don’t have any update.”

As part of the negotiations, New Delhi had also discussed the issue of the pending Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which would allow the South Asian country to bring in gas at much lower costs than traditional transportation routes, he said.

Iranian officials have also insisted that India increase its imports of crude oil from Tehran, the official added.

By The Wall Street Journal