Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi has urged foreign oil traders and investors not to lose the opportunity of making investment in Iran’s lucrative oil and gas industry.
In a meeting with Iranian and German oil managers and economic activists in Frankfurt, Germany, on Thursday, Qasemi outlined the Islamic Republic’s potentialities in oil, gas and energy sectors despite the illegal US-engineered sanctions.
Although sanctions have created some problems for Iran, they have failed to stop the development of the nation’s oil industry, he said.
“Despite the West’s unjust sanctions, Iran’s oil industry has followed its development trend well, and we are going to achieve complete self-sufficiency in various upstream, midstream and downstream industries by seizing the opportunities that the West’s sanctions have created for us,” Qasemi stated.
He called on foreign economic enterprises to seize the opportunity and get involved in various sectors of Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical industries.
Qasemi was in Germany to attend an international conference, which was hosted by the Munich Security Conference Foundation (MSC) and the F.A.Z. Forum in the city of Frankfurt to discuss “energy security.”
At the beginning of 2012, the United States and the European Union imposed fresh sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors aimed at preventing other countries from purchasing Iranian oil and conducting transactions with the Central Bank of Iran. The sanctions came into force in early summer 2012.
In November 2012, the US Senate approved a new round of sanctions against Iran's energy, ports, shipping and shipbuilding sectors.
The illegal US-engineered sanctions have been imposed based on the unfounded accusation that Iran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
SF/NN/HMV