Conoco Expects US' Iran/Libya Legislation to End Next Year
By Bruce McMahon
LONDON, July 12 (Bridge News) - Conoco expects the US' Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) not to be renewed when the legislation lapses in August 2001, the company's senior vice-president for government affairs, Mike Stinson, said Wednesday. The fate of the ILSA law would depend largely on whether US elections in November this year returned a president and congress of the same political hue, Stinson told delegates at an Iranian oil conference in London.
"ILSA ranks amongst the worse laws of all time," Stinson said. "It has caused embarrassment to the Clinton administration. I think by August next year, ILSA will be a bad memory, particularly if the Congress and the Administration are of the same party. I doubt that either would want to further the diplomatic nightmare."
The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act was signed into law by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1996, and seeks to prevent non-U.S. companies from investing significant capital in the oil and gas industries of Iran and Libya.
Any investment over $20 million by a non-U.S. company can in theory trigger action against that company by the U.S. government.
However, Stinson noted that the law has never been enforced, and that the Clinton Administration had been forced to pass a series of embarrassing waivers to companies, often from political and economic allies of the U.S., who had gone ahead with oil and gas investments in Iran regardless of the U.S. legislation.
"Each waiver is tantamount to an open admission of policy failure," Stinson said.
France's TotalFinaElf, Italy's Agip and Royal Dutch/Shell have all gone ahead with investments in Iran, ILSA notwithstanding.
Stinson's own company Conoco was in 1995 forced to pull out of an upstream oil contract with the National Iranian Oil Co to develop the Sirri A and E oilfields. Within two weeks of Conoco signing the deal, Clinton issued an executive order banning the company from pursuing the Sirri project.
slb.com |
