The British and Royal Dutch Shell, which ranks as the second largest non-governmental oil company in the world, has decided to pull out of a planned gas deal in Iran.
The alleged reason is pressure from US politicians to divest from Iran in efforts to penalize the country for running a supposed nuclear weapons program.
The deal was signed in 2002 for the development of a gas field in southern Iran. The planned project would have seen the gas cooled and turned, after extraction, into liquid natural gas (LNG) for transport in tankers.
Iran will now have to find a new partner for the project and companies from countries where the US political influence is more limited - such as Russia, India and China - are now lining up to step in. However, these companies, including Russia's Gazprom and India's Indian Oil Corp, have less experience with these types of projects than Shell.
|