Azerbaijan, Baku, August 3 /Trend/
Khatam ol-Anbia managed to replace Total and Shell in Iran's energy sector, said Brigadier General Rostam Ghasemi, the commander of Khatam ol-Anbia, Mehr News Agency reported.
Ghasemi, nominated for Oil Minister, made these remarks while addressing the Parliament's members with his ministerial agenda today.
Last September, expanded U.S. sanctions on Iran there have prompted four of Europe's five biggest oil companies - Total, Statoil, Eni and the RD/Shell - to stop investing in Iran.
General added that with the Parliament's support he is planning to increase oil and gas production in 22 joint fields.
Ghasemi underlined that Khatam al-Anbia, a major construction contractor and the economic arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), managed to implement a number of oil, gas and petrochemical projects after the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war.
Ghasemi emphasized that to keep the position of the OPEC's second largest producer and to rank the first in the world as a petrochemical producer is among his priorities as a minister of oil.
Today, the Iranian Parliament is holding a session to confirm candidates of heads for newly formed ministries.
Earlier, on July 27, in a letter to the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Parliament), President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad introduced his nominees for four ministries.
According to Ahmadinejad's letter, among the nominees are Roustam Ghasemi as Oil Minister, Abdolreza Sheikholeslami as Minister for Cooperatives, Labor and Social Security, Mehdi Ghazanfari as Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, and Mohammad Abbasi as Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs.
Iranian conservative MP Ali Motahhari opposed Ghasemi as a nominee for the Oil Minister.
Motahhari said he is against military forces' entering the governmental bodies, especially the Oil Ministry, until Ghasemi resigned from the IRGC.
In February, 2010, the Treasury blacklisted Ghasemi banning him from doing business with U.S. firms or holding assets in the U.S.