Iran urged Europe on Monday to speed up efforts to salvage a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers that U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned in May, saying French oil group Total has formally pulled out a major gas project.
Efforts by the remaining signatories - EU members Britain, France and Germany plus China and Russia - to avoid the agreement’s collapse are struggling as Washington has said any firms dealing with Teheran will be barred from doing business in the United States.
“Europeans and other signatories of the deal have been trying to save the deal ... but the process has been slow. It should be accelerated,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said. “Iran relies mainly on its own capabilities to overcome America’s new sanctions,” he told a news conference broadcast on state TV.
European states have been scrambling to ensure Iran gets enough economic benefits to persuade it to stay in the deal, which Trump said was “deeply flawed”.
Washington imposed new sanctions on Iran in August, targeting its trade in gold and other precious metals, purchases of U.S. dollars and its car industry.
The European powers, China and Russia say they will do more to encourage their businesses to remain engaged with Iran. But the threat of the U.S. sanctions has prompted many major companies to pull out of Iran.
Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said France’s Total ) has formally left a contract to develop Iran’s South Pars Gas project. “The process to replace (Total) with another company is underway,” he was quoted as saying by state TV.
Total, which signed the deal in 2017 with an initial investment of $1 billion, did not have any immediate comment.
Iranian officials had earlier suggested that China’s state-owned CNPC could take over Total’s stake in the offshore project. CNPC, which already has a 30 percent stake in the deal, is an experienced onshore oil and gas producer, but is relatively new to offshore drilling.
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