TOTAL/Sanctions/Iran/Fr Govt

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Paris,Monday May 19,1997. International Herald Tribune, " TOTAL denies Deal with Iran " (compiled from dispatches)

The following story indicates how TOTAL, with invested interests of the French government, continue to implement strategy in defiance of US government sanctions against outlaw regimes, for profit and greed. (France is now head-spinning over its loss of influence in Zaire, having this weekend used its para-military police forces, the CRS, to violently clash with the new Democratic Republic of the Congo, and preventing them from occupying their Paris embassy. ) I really don't know how the IHT ran this story, with the denial Sunday, as offices are closed over the Pentecote, unless they got the denial from Iran. 

The IHT also ran in its Monday edition two stories on Burma, from the WP, and NYT:

*WP, Defying Pressure, Burmese Junta Shows No Sign of Easing Its Grip
*NYT, Seth Mydans, From Burma, With Good Will, Heroin Suspect Is Caught and Returned to Thailand
(some good will! doesnt say how he was 'caught and returned'...)

TEHRAN -  TOTAL SA denied Sunday that it had signed an oil and gas contract with Iran, despite an annoucement by Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayat, that a deal had been reached.

A representative of the French company said TOTAL had 'signed no contract' with the Islamic republic. 

Mr Velayati announced Sunday that the $3.5 billion contract to develop the Suth Pars field, one of the biggest oil and gas fields in the Gulf, was signed between TOTAL and Iran's state-owned National Iranian Oil Co.

'Talks are continuing with foreign oil and gas companies on a number of profjects, but no final agreements have been signed yet,' the Iranian company said.

TOTAL and Royal Dutch/Shell Group are among European companies bidding to develop the second phase of the South Pars field at an estimated cost of $900 million.

TOTAL and Shell confirmed this month that they have been involved in advanced negotiaions with the Iranian company on South Pars but that a contract had not yet been signed.

TOTAL is developing two fields off the Persian Gulf island of Sirri under an agreement signed in 1995. TOTAL signed secured the $600 million ocntarct in July 1995 after Conoco Inc., a subsidiary of DuPont Co., bowed to pressure from the US government and withdrew from an agreement to develop the two Sirri fields. Under the terms of trade sanctions against Iran, US companies are barred from investigating in Iran's oil and gas fields.

(AFP, Reuters, Bloomberg)