Several foreign firms active in Iran energy sector: GAO

Several foreign energy firms are actively investing in Iran’s oil and gas sectors in defiance of the West’s embargoes against Tehran over the its nuclear energy program, an American supervisory body says.

According to a Friday report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) for Congress, most of the firms are from the nine countries that have been granted extended waivers from the illegal US sanctions on Iran due to their reductions of purchases of Iranian crude oil.

On Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Taiwan to the list of the countries exempted from the sanctions for another six months.

According to the GAO report, China’s Sinopec and National Petroleum Corporation, South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co., India’s ONGC Videsh Ltd, Indian Oil Corp Ltd, and Oil India Ltd as well as South Africa’s Sasol are among the energy companies active in Iran’s oil and gas sectors.

The report also noted that the involvement of several companies from China, Malaysia, India, Croatia and Venezuela in Iran’s energy sector is difficult to confirm.

The US State Department which reviewed the report before its publication has declined to comment on the GAO report.

On September 14, the United States exempted Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Japan from complying with the sanctions on Iran’s oil industry for another 180 days.

At the beginning of 2012, the US and the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors with the goal of preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran.

The illegal US-engineered sanctions were imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted to nuclear weapons production.