Oil contracts ‘generally only profiting foreigners’

TEHRAN, Feb. 21 (MNA) – A senior Principlist representative has said government should practice transparency to win the public trust upon its performance. Ahmad Tavakoli and Elias Naderan two Principlist candidates of 10th Parliament elections of February 26 on Saturday in Tehran focusing on economic issues. Mr. Tavkoli’s critiques were mainly over possible infiltrations by what he called ‘the dominating hegemonic powers’ through mechanisms of Iranian Petroleum and Energy Club’ where Tavakoli believed was a ‘Davos of energy and oil and multinational companies had found footholds.’ “The government had demanded that Oil Ministry prepare a new model of oil contracts, which had been drafted almost after two and half years; since then, an NGO, Justice and Transparency Watch has been regularly watching the oil agreements. International companies are sort of experts in oil contracts and this generally leads to an asymmetry in profits, the majority of benefits going to these multinational companies and damaging the public,” Tavakoli asserted. “We have found that the majority of agreements undermine national governance over such resources and are unconstitutional. The oil minister however dealt with these criticisms with equanimity, welcoming most criticism, calling the NGO experts for a session on oil contracts. We have also some other points to be made on contracts.” Tavakoli especially mentioned the Club which he believed was facing issues in terms of infiltration with oil agreements extending to more nations and countries. “Apparently an NGO, the Club is a forum of former Cabinet members, oil ministry officials, and the entrepreneurs of oil and gas sector. It has also included as members the lobbying circles of multinational companies. We believe these issues should be addressed to timely avoid the damages incurring upon the industry,” he told the meeting. On the lack of transparency by the government in revealing real growth rates and other important figures the public should be informed about, the Principlist candidate believed that government had avoided revealing figures for its expediencies; “they would freely choose a track when the growth rate is modestly positive and chose another track where the figures are not so hopeful. This would leave them unfettered in their daily handling of the economy beyond the public regulating bodies,” he emphasized. “Lack of transparency would put the interested public who do business and deal with economic figures for their business on absolute state of indecision, since the government has not transparently given the figures on growth and general economic conditions. This is the right of the public to have access to free flow of information,” Tavakoli told the meeting, believing that the conduct would destroy the mutual trust between the public and the government, with dire consequences.