Business | Oil & Gas
Iran 'well placed to overcome US sanctions'
Iran has endured US sanctions for decades and its strategic oil industry will not be beaten by them now - however much they hurt, a top Iranian oil official said on Sunday.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:39 April 21, 2008
Rome: Iran has endured US sanctions for decades and its strategic oil industry will not be beaten by them now - however much they hurt, a top Iranian oil official said on Sunday.
The pain is not just Iran's as oil at a record $117 a barrel has focused attention on the need to extract as much from the ground as possible.
"It will cost us. There is no doubt our projects will be affected," Akbar Torkan, head of planning affairs at the National Iranian Oil Co, said. "But it will not stop our projects for development and our production continues to the market."
Starting last year, the US has banned Americans from doing business with a number of Iranian state banks and other firms because of their alleged involvement in financing nuclear and missile technologies.
A senior US State Department official said last week the sanctions were making Tehran increasingly isolated, although it had yet to give up the nuclear programme Washington believes is designed to produce atomic weapons.
Torkan, a former defence minister, said Opec's second biggest producer was expert in coping with isolation.
"We managed to be able to maintain our capabilities ... Even after 30 years of sanctions, all our F-14 aircraft are flying and operational. This is the result of the sanctions that they have done."
The financial sanctions place Iran's oil industry under the same kind of pressure.
Options
"It will create some costs for us," said Torkan, but he said the oil industry was "stronger than during war-time" and well placed to overcome obstacles.
Asked how, he said he could not tell that to an international newswire.
"This is news for every newspaper ... They will try again to close the ways that we are working," he said on the sidelines of talks between energy producers and consumers.
The second biggest oil exporter in the Opec, Iran is shipping at a steady rate of around 2.4 million barrels per day to international markets.
It has been receiving payment from clients almost everywhere except the United States, which has banned imports of Iranian crude since 1995, even though buyers of crude in theory have to rely on major international banks to guarantee their credit.
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