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Iran Protests "Unauthorized" Exploration of Caspian Oil
Iran expressed strong objection on Sunday to what it called "unauthorized" exploration studies in the oil-rich Caspian Sea, warning any such moves are "illegal."
The official IRNA news agency quoted a statement of the Iranian Oil Ministry as saying that it protests prospecting by foreign companies in Iran's 20 percent sector of the Caspian Sea.
The warning came a day after Iran summoned Azerbaijan's charge d'affaires in Tehran to protest plans by the state-run oil company of Azerbaijan, Socar, to carry out oil exploration studies with unidentified foreign companies at the Alborz oil field "in Iran's sector of the Caspian Sea."
Iran is estimated to have the world's third largest reserves of oil and gas in its sector of the Caspian Sea, after the Persian Gulf and Siberia.
"The (Iranian) authorities will stop the prospecting activities of any company in the mentioned (Iran-owned) sector and the Oil Ministry will no more enter into a contract with such companies," the ministry said in the statement, adding that "any contract signed with other countries in the sector (which is owned by Iran) is invalid."
The Caspian Sea is also shared by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.
Iran has pushed for division of the sea into five equal sectors. But Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan contend that the sea floor should be divided into national sectors, which would leave Iran with the smallest slice.
Last June, the five littoral states held their fourth meeting of deputy foreign ministers in the Azerbaijan's capital of Baku, where they agreed that bilateral or trilateral agreement in the absence of the collective consensus will not be effective.
The question of how to divide the resource-rich Caspian Sea is supposed to be on top of the agenda of a summit of the five littoral countries in October. The summit has been postponed several times since last April.
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