From The New York Times, July 11, 2008, by DAVID JOLLY:
PARIS — Total, the French oil giant, has decided to back away from planned investments in Iran because of political uncertainty, a company official said Thursday.
Total’s withdrawal from the country, including a planned huge gas project in the South Pars gas field, makes it the last major Western oil company to give up on Iran amid pressure from Washington to stop doing business with Tehran.
...The news was first reported Thursday in The Financial Times, which quoted the Total chief executive, Christophe de Margerie, as saying: “Today we would be taking too much political risk to invest in Iran because people will say: ‘Total will do anything for money.’ ”
...Total’s partners on the South Pars project — Royal Dutch Shell, the largest European oil company, and Repsol of Spain — pulled out in May.
The announcement of Total’s withdrawal came after Iranian missile tests Wednesday and Thursday that led Western leaders to express concern about the country’s military capabilities.
It also came after Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for punishments for companies that invest in Iran.
“We’ve had a law on the books for a dozen years that requires such sanctions, but it never has been enforced,” Bloomberg News quoted Mr. Berman as saying at a hearing on Iran in Washington. “It’s time for our European allies and their corporations to cease investing in Iran.”...
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