BLOOMBERG: Iran Expects to Win Bid for Basell in a Month, Official Says (ShellNews.net) 16 April 05

April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Iran expects its bid to buy Basell NV, the Dutch petrochemicals company owned by BASF AG and Royal Dutch/Shell Group, to be approved by the chemical company's shareholders in ``less than a month,'' an Iranian official said.

``According to all the documents, we are the winner, but still they're trying to make their final decision,'' Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, the managing director of the state-owned National Petrochemical Company of Iran, said today in an interview in Assaluyeh, Iran. ``We have to wait for the shareholders because we're not the decision makers,'' said Nematzadeh, who is also Iran's deputy oil minister.

Iran's NPC is competing with India's Haldia Petrochemicals for Basell. The Iranian company is favored because its oil business would make Basell independent of Shell's pricing power, Financial Times Deutschland reported on April 1. Basell may fetch between 4.4 billion euros ($5.7 billion) and 5 billion euros, according to the paper's report.

U.S. sanctions on the sale of assets to Iran is threatening to block the sale of Basell to NPC. Iran is offering to exclude the Dutch company's U.S. units from the sale to overcome any objection from Washington, Nematzadeh said.

To contact the reporter on this story:

Marc Wolfensberger in Assaluyeh, Iran at mwolfens@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Tim Coulter at tcoulter@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: April 16, 2005 06:40 EDT 

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