A conference planned for December in London to unveil new Iranian oil contracts has been pushed back to February 2016, organizers say. 

It comes after Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Rokneddin Javadi said earlier this month that the new contracts would be unveiled first at a Tehran conference most probably in early November.

“The supplementary conference will be held one or two months later most probably in London,” he added.

The London conference is now being delayed for the fourth time as Iran is putting the finishing touches on the new contracts model.

Officials have been touting the new contracts, hoping to attract foreign investment to the country’s vast oil and gas sector after the removal of sanctions.

The new model, called the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC), will be unveiled for a combination of brown and green fields as well as exploration blocks up for development in a series of projects worth $185 billion.

IPC is replacing buyback deals which required the host government to pay the contractor an agreed price for all volumes of hydrocarbons it produced.

Under the IPC, the NIOC will set up joint ventures for crude oil and gas production with international companies which will be paid with a share of the output.

Iran holds the first largest natural gas reserves and fourth largest oil reserves in the world.

International companies are anxiously awaiting Iran’s presentation of oil development projects as the race tightens for new business opportunities in the country.

Iranian officials have said preliminary negotiations have begun with France’s Total and Italy’s Eni as well as Italian oil and gas industry contractor Saipem for boosting recovery from offshore oilfields.