Iran Says U.S. Sanctions on Gasoline Not Workable, Won't Halt Fuel Supply

[Purveyor]

By Ladane Nasseri and Alexander Kwiatkowski

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. legislation to impose gasoline sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program won’t succeed in halting fuel supplies, an Oil Ministry official said.

“If for any reason any refinery or trader would stop working with us, we can refer to other refineries and traders and receive the amount of gasoline needed,” said Hojatollah Ghanimifard, vice president for investment affairs at the National Iranian Oil Co. “These kinds of unilateral sanctions are not new to us. For the past 30 years such sanctions have been imposed by the U.S. and everyone knows they could not be workable,” he said by phone today from Tehran.

The U.S. Senate yesterday unanimously passed legislation to expand sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Iran’s energy sector. The measure requires sanctions against foreign companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran or help develop its refining capacity. The bill needs to be reconciled with similar legislation passed by the U.S. House in December.

Iran has come under three sets of United Nations sanctions since December 2006 because of nuclear developments that the U.S. and some western allies claim are aimed at building atomic weapons. Iran says its program is civilian and that it’s allowed as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Enough Middlemen

“These type of unilateral sanctions don’t really have much of an impact because there will be enough middlemen for Iran to carry on as normal,” Olivier Jakob, managing director of oil consultant Petromatrix GmbH in Zug, Switzerland, said in a telephone interview.

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