Bando Bling
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Halliburton in bed with Iran
Vivienne Walt from Tehran reports in the February 7th issue of the Fortune magazine:
"Tehran, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, part of the "axis of evil"? Yes, the company was a tenant, confirmed the guard in the lobby of a building on Bucharest Street when we dropped in one recent afternoon. The staff rarely invited guests up to their tenth-floor offices, said the guard, and the company's name was not among those displayed on the lobby wall. Halliburton finally dispatched two Iranian staff members to ask this reporter to leave. Said the guard softly: "We're not too sure what the company is up to."
The article continues to provide some mind bogging information:
"Actually it's no big mystery. In January Halliburton and the local Oriental Kish Oil won a $308 million contract to drill for gas in Iran's giant South Pars field. "Halliburton and Oriental Kish are the final winners," Akbar Torkan, managing director of Pars Oil & Gas, said on national TV. The statement sparked fury among Iran's hardliners. One newspaper warned, "Footsteps of the Yankees heard moving in on Iran's oil sector."
"Tehran, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, part of the "axis of evil"? Yes, the company was a tenant, confirmed the guard in the lobby of a building on Bucharest Street when we dropped in one recent afternoon. The staff rarely invited guests up to their tenth-floor offices, said the guard, and the company's name was not among those displayed on the lobby wall. Halliburton finally dispatched two Iranian staff members to ask this reporter to leave. Said the guard softly: "We're not too sure what the company is up to."
The article continues to provide some mind bogging information:
"Actually it's no big mystery. In January Halliburton and the local Oriental Kish Oil won a $308 million contract to drill for gas in Iran's giant South Pars field. "Halliburton and Oriental Kish are the final winners," Akbar Torkan, managing director of Pars Oil & Gas, said on national TV. The statement sparked fury among Iran's hardliners. One newspaper warned, "Footsteps of the Yankees heard moving in on Iran's oil sector."
While Halliburton insists its activities in Iran are entirely legal, some in Congress claim that the Houston oil services giant is milking a loophole in the U.S. embargo that allows foreign subsidiaries of American companies to work in Iran. "They are operating on the very boundaries of legality of U.S. law," says Dan Katz, chief counsel for Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-New Jersey), who has long argued that Halliburton—once run by Vice President Dick Cheney—is exploiting its political clout.
So are U.S. companies tiptoeing back into Iran, ten years after Bill Clinton imposed sanctions?"
Amazing .......isn't it?
