TEHRAN: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his fourth attempt Sunday to name an oil minister, nominating before Parliament the key ministry's current caretaker Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh.Ahmadinejad's three previous nominees were shunned over their lack of experience, and the latest candidate appears to be the strongest candidate so far - having held the post on a temporary basis for the past three months and having served as a deputy oil minister prior to that.
His nomination also represents a major compromise by the hard-line president, who has been pushing for a fresh face to purge a ministry he claims has been run by
A vote of confidence is expected to take place on December 11, Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel said in a session broadcast live on state radio.
"It looks like a good decision to name someone from within the Oil Ministry. The atmosphere is more positive," oil consultant Hatef Haeri said. "There is no doubt that Vaziri-Hamaneh is the best option so far given his long record in the Oil Ministry," said Hossein Afarideh, a member of the Parliament's influential energy commission.
But the issue many deputies raised was their unease with Ahmadinejad's style, in that the president has apparently refused to consult with Parliament before presenting each nominee. Many MPs did give a frosty reaction when Vaziri-Hamaneh's name was announced, although Afarideh said "the initially negative reaction will not be the final decision of deputies." "Since some deputies do not consider it good to once again reject the nominee, I think if Vaziri-Hamaneh consults with deputies he would win the confidence vote," said Shokrollah Attarzadeh, another energy commission member.
Vaziri-Hamaneh is also a figure seen as unlikely to upset volatile international markets - or indeed efforts to secure greater foreign investment inside Iran. On Sunday he said the oil and gas "buy-back" scheme, set up for contracts with foreign companies in order to overcome a constitutional barrier to them holding equity, should be abandoned. "But we will definitely have foreign partners in our contracts and we welcome foreign investment under appropriate conditions and prices," Vaziri-Hamaneh said.
Iran's Constitution, hammered out after the 1979 Islamic revolution, puts oil and gas within the state sector and forbids concessionary basis or direct equity stake production-sharing agreements with foreign firms. Analysts have repeatedly said Iran - holder of the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves - is under pressure to at least tweak the arrangement if it wants to meet targets to boost its oil production capacity from 4.2 million barrels per day to 5.4 million by 2010 and then to 7 million by 2015.