Commodity Trading

Tehran, Iran (AHN) – In order to comply with the American sanctions, four energy companies have announced their withdrawal from Iran.

The United States said that Italy’s ENI, Royal Dutch Shell, French Total and Norwegian Statoil on Thursday decided to stop their business with Iranian companies to avoid penalties aimed at companies, which continue to do business with Iran despite the sanctions.

Swiss-based Naftiran Intertrade Co, which has not yet taken a decision on discontinuing the business, is likely to face new sanctions.

Deputy U.S. Secretary of State James Steinberg said that investors have started pulling out their activities from Iran after the U.S. tightened its sanctions on Iran in the wake of its controversial nuclear program, which Tehran claims is for purely peaceful purposes.

A recent legislation authorized the U.S. administration to punish foreign companies with fines for investing more that $12.7 million in Iranian energy sector.

Without elaborating, the state department said that they had launched an investigation on some other energy firms, which possible violated the sanctions. Steinberg said that National Iranian Oil Company’s subsidiary Naftiran is the main financier in the Iranian oil industry, adding that the American firms have already been instructed to stop all business activities with the Swiss company.

He added that the U.S. would impose additional sanctions to discourage non-U.S. companies from doing business with it. Steinberg’s comments came just a day after Washington froze assets of eight senior Iranian officials for violating human rights after their disputed Presidential Elections last year.

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