Shell, Repsol, Total, Defy U.S. to Seek Iran Deals (Celestine Bohlen)

  President George W. Bush's campaign to turn Iran into an economic pariah is being rebuffed from Spain to Malaysia.

  Feb. 23, 2007 -- (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's campaign to turn Iran into an economic pariah is being rebuffed from Spain to Malaysia as countries and companies pursue long-term agreements to tap into the world's second-largest reserves of oil and gas.

  Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's largest oil company, and Spain's Repsol YPF SA -- which last month signed a new agreement on a three-year-old gas production project, estimated at more than $10 billion -- are among those who can ill afford to give up oil and natural-gas projects in Iran, said James Bell, president of Gas Strategies, a London-based consulting firm.

``Companies who want a piece of the action in Iran have no choice but to stay in the long, patient waiting game,'' Bell said in a telephone interview.

  U.S. officials have issued explicit warnings against such deals and even threatened to use a 1996 law to levy penalties against foreign companies that do business both in the U.S. and in Iran, now subject to United Nations sanctions for refusing to halt its nuclear program.

  Still, Austria and Switzerland last month signed ``memorandums of understanding'' for gas deliveries from Iran in 2012 via a pipeline that has yet to be built. In Tehran this month, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee reopened talks on a long-stalled project to pipe in gas from Iran.

  Thierry Desmarest, chairman of Paris-based Total SA, Europe's third-biggest oil company, said Feb. 14 that negotiations are continuing with Iran over a major liquefied natural gas project.

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