Off the wire
• Western Balkan countries should maintain EU perspectives: Austrian banker  • Search continues for crashed Black Hawk helicopter with 11 service men aboard  • Austria's trade deficit shrinks significantly in 2014  • Berlusconi celebrates his free of sex case  • U.S.-Cuba restore direct phone communications  • Feature: Greece culminates tug of war with Germany over WWII compensations  • Austrian agricultural exports to Russia drop 52 mln USD in 2014  • Germany's benchmark DAX index advances  • 1.04 mln Albanians got employed in Q4 2014  • Foreign exchange rate of euro to other currencies  
You are here: 　 Home

Belarus welcomes U.S. decision to cancel sanctions against oil company

Xinhua, March 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has welcomed the decision of the U.S. State Department to lift sanctions against the country's state-owned Belorusneft oil company for its ties to Iran's petroleum industry, local media reported on Wednesday.

Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dmitry Mironchik said.

The official stressed this also corresponds to the new atmosphere in Belarusian-U.S. relations shaped through the joint efforts of the two sides.

According to Mironchik, for a long time Belorusneft, had nothing to do with oil extraction projects in Iran, that had been under U.S. sanctions for failing to meet international obligations over its nuclear program since 1996.

Earlier, the U.S. State Department decided to terminate the sanctions against Belorusneft imposed on the company since March 29, 2011 for over a 500-million-U.S.-dollar contract with Iran's NaftIran Intertrade Co., a Swiss-based subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

The Department explained that Belorusneft is no longer engaged in activities subject to the sanctions and assured that it will not pursue it in the future.

Belorusneft announced its plans to develop oil fields in Iran in 2007. Although a few months later the company announced the refusal of the Iranian project, the sanctions remained in force. Endite