UK blocks Iran’s gas revenues over bans

Iran says it has been paid for selling natural gas from a field that it jointly owns with BP in the North Sea but the payments cannot be accessed due to sanctions.

According to the reports, Ali Kardor, the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), was quoted by the media as saying that the revenues obtained from selling Iran’s share of the products of Rhum gas field have been deposited into an overseas NIOC account, stressing however that the same account is currently frozen.

Kardor added that Iran is currently negotiating with Britain to release unfreeze the account which was established at a British bank before the 1979 Islamic Revolution after Iran and BP signed a deal to jointly invest in Rhum field. 

The field started producing a daily of 190 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2005. However, the British government ordered to shut it down in 2010 as a result of sanctions against Iran. 

Production from the field resumed in 2013 and is presently supporting about five percent of the gas needs of Britain.

In September 2015, Iran's Deputy Petroleum Minister for International and Commerce Affairs Amir-Hossein Zamaninia told reporters that UK's Chargé d'Affaires to Iran Ajay Sharma had told him London would pay Iran its share of revenues from Rhum field after the removal of sanctions against Iran.

SS