Iran Oil Ministry: Exports cut to Britain, France

ALI AKBAR DAREINI

Asso­ci­ated Press

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has halted oil ship­ments to Britain and France, the Oil Min­istry said Sun­day, in an appar­ent pre-emptive blow against the Euro­pean Union after the bloc imposed sanc­tions on Iran’s cru­cial fuel exports.

The EU imposed tough sanc­tions against Iran last month, which included a freeze of the country’s cen­tral bank assets and an oil embargo set to begin in July. Iran’s Oil Min­is­ter Ros­tam Qassemi had warned ear­lier this month that Tehran could cut off oil exports to “hos­tile” Euro­pean nations. The 27-nation EU accounts for about 18 per­cent of Iran’s oil exports.

How­ever, the Iran­ian action was not likely to have any sig­nif­i­cant direct impact on Euro­pean sup­plies because both Britain and France had already moved last year to sharply cur­tail oil pur­chases from Tehran to less than 3 per­cent of their daily needs.

The EU sanc­tions, along with other puni­tive mea­sures imposed by the U.S., are part of West­ern efforts to derail Iran’s dis­puted nuclear pro­gram, which the West fears is aimed at devel­op­ing atomic weapons. Iran denies the charges, and says its pro­gram is for peace­ful purposes.

The spokesman for Iran’s Oil Min­istry, Ali Reza Nikzad-Rahbar, said on the ministry’s web­site Sun­day that “crude oil exports to British and French com­pa­nies have been halted.”

“We have our own cus­tomers and have no prob­lem to sell and export our crude oil to new cus­tomers,” he said.

Britain’s For­eign Office declined com­ment, and there was no imme­di­ate response from French officials.

The semi­of­fi­cial Mehr news agency said exports were sus­pended to the two coun­tries Sun­day. It also said the National Iran­ian Oil Com­pany has sent let­ters to some Euro­pean refiner­ies with an ulti­ma­tum to either sign long-term con­tracts of two to five years or be cut off.

Mehr did not spec­ify which coun­tries were sent the ulti­ma­tum, but Spain, Italy and Greece are among Europe’s biggest buy­ers of Iran­ian oil.

Iran’s tar­get­ing of Britain and France appeared to be a polit­i­cal deci­sion to pun­ish the two coun­tries for sup­port­ing tougher sanc­tions against Iran over its nuclear program.

Sunday’s announce­ment fol­lows a flurry of con­tra­dic­tory sig­nals by Iran about back­lash against the EU for impos­ing a boy­cott on Iran­ian oil.

Last week, state media said Iran was plan­ning to cut off oil exports to six EU nations, includ­ing France, but later reports said the nations were only told that Iran has no prob­lem find­ing replace­ment cus­tomers for the Euro­pean shipments.

The EU sanc­tions, imposed last month, were part of West­ern efforts to tar­get Iran’s crit­i­cal oil sec­tor in attempts to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program.

Also on Sun­day , the sec­re­tary gen­eral of Iran’s cen­tral bank said a deci­sion by SWIFT, an inter­na­tional bank­ing clear­ing­house used by nearly every coun­try and major cor­po­ra­tion in the world, to shut Iran out from its respected net­work will not harm the country.

“The coun­try will not face any prob­lems as a result of the SWIFT mea­sures,” Mah­moud Ahmadi was quoted as say­ing by the offi­cial IRNA news agency. He added that Iran has been “pur­su­ing alter­na­tive solu­tions” since West­ern nations imposed sanc­tions on Tehran. He did not elaborate.

SWIFT said in a state­ment on its web site Fri­day that it will com­ply with expected instruc­tions from the EU to cut off Iran­ian banks. SWIFT has pre­vi­ously brushed off inter­na­tional efforts to use its net­work to tar­get coun­tries or com­pa­nies, telling enforcers that it does not judge the mer­its of the trans­ac­tions pass­ing through the portal.

Posted by AP News on Feb 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.