An official at Dragon Oil Plc told Bloomberg on Wednesday that despite tightening international sanctions against Iran, it has no difficulty in paying for a drilling rig that belongs to Iran which is currently operating for the company in the Caspian Sea.
Dragon is currently using the Iran-Khazar rig, owned by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), to drill wells off Turkmenistan.
“The company has ways to pay for it (the rig) without violating the sanctions,” the company’s CEO Abdul Jaleel Al Khalifa said in London on Wednesday, though he declined to elaborate further.
“We can live with the current sanctions rules. We are abiding by them and keep monitoring any new sanctions that come through and I don’t think it will hurt our operations. I have clarified the use of Iran-Khazar with people of the US consulate in the Emirates,” he added.
Meanwhile, the company’s director of finance, Tarun Ohri, stated in an interview in London that although it may become difficult in the future, “currently we don’t have any problems.”
The United States, Israel and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program, using this pretext to impose sanctions on the Iranian energy and financial sectors and threaten the country with military attack.
Iran has refuted the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful use.
The IAEA has never found any evidence indicating that Tehran's civilian nuclear program has been diverted towards nuclear weapons production.
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A UAE-based oil exploration company which is using an Iranian rig says its payments to Iran have not been affected by Western sanctions as the company has been able to find a way around them.
News ID 181519
