Exxon wants to work in Iran oil patch

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix:

Exxon Mobil Corp. is ramping up lobbying efforts with the U.S. government over Iranian sanctions that have locked out American oil companies from the Middle Eastern nation for more than three decades.

Exxon, the world’s largest publicly traded crude producer by market value, hired the lobbying firm founded by former Sen. Don Nickles, an Oklahoma Republican, to work on Iranian sanctions, according to federal disclosure documents. This is the first time since 2010 that the Irving, Texas-based oil company enlisted outside lobbyists to discuss Iran.

Western energy companies are eager to tap Iranian fields that are among the biggest and cheapest to exploit in the world, said Morningstar Inc.’s Allen Good. Iran nationalized oil production in the 1970s. Sanctions imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later over the country’s nuclear ambitions have kept the country largely off-limits to American firms. Iran is home to the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves and second-biggest cache of natural gas.

“Given sanctions and the dilapidation of oilfields over time, it looks like it’d be a lot of work” for foreign companies to revive production, said Good, a Chicago-based analyst at Morningstar. “But unlike Iraq, you’d don’t have a civil war going on so it’d be an easier path to growing production. You could get a pretty good bump pretty quickly.”

Richard Keil, an Exxon spokesman reached by phone, said he couldn’t immediately comment.

European oil executives have started courting Iran in anticipation of sanctions relief. On Thursday, Eni SpA Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi said he traveled to Tehran two weeks ago.
...

I think it would be a mistake to lift sanctions on Iran and it would still be a risky proposition for companies operating there if they were lifted, because Iran has not changed its policy of aggression and it is still the chief state sponsor of terrorism.  It is a country whose leadership is made up of Islamic religious bigots and that colors most of their decision making.  Any lifting of sanctions is likely to be short lived because they are unlikely to allow inspections in areas such as military gases and where their scientist are working on nukes.

Increasing Iran's revenue from oil and gas would only further fuel their aggression and terrorism.