Minister: Iran Can Proceed Alone on South Pars if Necessary
Iran will proceed with the multibillion-dollar South Pars liquefied natural gas project without French oil major Total SA (TOT) if necessary, acting oil minister Gholam Hussein Nozari said Wednesday.
"We prefer to have them in the project, but if they’re not in we will proceed
without them," Nozari said at a press conference.
Nozari said that Total quoted a price of $11 billion for the project to the Iranians, and that price was too high.
"We think $11 billion is unacceptable for Iran; we want additional negotiations with Total," Nozari said.
Total is still at the stage of evaluating whether the Pars project is worth pursuing, Total spokeswoman Patricia Marie told Dow Jones Newswires, responding to Nozari’s comments. Only then would the company evaluate the implications of Iran’s growing isolation, she added.
The likely cost of the project to extract and liquefy natural gas from the South Pars field "has risen a lot these last months," following recent studies, Marie said, though she declined to specify a figure.
The company isn’t prepared to comment on the state of negotiations with Iranian officials and has never revealed the projected cost of the project to parties not involved in the deal, Marie said.
Earlier this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanded tougher sanctions on Iran and urged oil giant Total not to invest in Iran.
Tuesday, Total’s Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie said the South Pars project was "stuck" due to difficult negotiations with the National Iranian Oil Company, or NIOC.
Separately, Nozari said he didn’t see a need for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to further raise output beyond the 500,000 barrels a day already agreed at the September meeting despite the increase in oil prices to fresh record highs last week.
"We will have to examine the oil market conditions, but I don’t think there will be any additional raise in production," Nozari said.
He also said that Iran would be willing to go ahead with the $7 billion Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline without India if there were further delays.
"We would like to have India in the project, but if they procrastinate, we and Pakistan will proceed without them," he said.
India and Pakistan have yet to reach an agreement on transit fees for the pipeline. A deal on the pipeline has also been hampered by Iran’s insistence on reviewing the gas pricing every three years, which both India and Pakistan find unacceptable.
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