NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) continued its Sasol campaign by once again calling on the South African energy giant to immediately end its business in Iran, where it remains active nineteen months after pledging to leave. Sasol continues to delay its exit from Iran, at the same time that it invests in the U.S. energy sector and lobbies U.S. officials for tax breaks.
Sasol maintains a joint venture with a sanctioned Iranian entity that operates two polyethylene plants in Iran. Sasol announced in October 2011 its intention to divest, but has failed to follow through on that commitment. In a recent conference call for shareholders, Sasol’s Chief Financial Officer Christine Ramon confirmed that Sasol has still not pulled out of Iran.
Yet Sasol has committed to extensive business operations in the United States, including building a multi-billion dollar gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana. Further, Sasol appears to be conducting a U.S. lobbying campaign to obtain eligibility for certain tax subsidies under Section 6426 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). Sasol’s purported effort to have gas-to-liquids fuel included as a qualified alternative fuel under the IRC could result in hundreds of millions of dollars of tax savings for the company.
UANI finds it highly troubling that Sasol would lobby for such benefits at a time when it is still engaged in an ongoing partnership with a regime that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and responsible for the deaths of U.S. troops.
In a letter to Sasol executives, UANI CEO, Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, wrote:
…UANI was troubled by Sasol’s transcribed conference call of June 10, 2013, which confirmed Sasol's ongoing business activities in the Iranian energy sector through Arya Sasol Polymer Company - a $900 million joint venture between Sasol and Iran’s state-owned and sanctioned National Petrochemical Company (“NPC”). …
… The insertion of the subordinate clause - “albeit slower than we initially anticipated” - is a prime illustration of Sasol's penchant for dissembling on the issue of its partnership with regime-controlled entities in Iran’s petrochemical sector. Clearly, in light of the fact that Sasol first announced its intention to divest from its Iran venture as far back as November 2011, as well as the fact that Iran’s petrochemical sector has been effectively blacklisted by the U.S., the extensive delay in Sasol’s execution of its divestment from Iran is incomprehensible and unacceptable.
… In the January 2013 letter, UANI stated: “...fourteen months have already passed since Sasol's intention to divest its Iran business first became public.” Incredibly, that statement must now be revised to read “nineteen months have already passed since Sasol's intention to divest its Iran business first became public.” Sasol’s self-serving announcement that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with an anonymous and unnamed “interested party” regarding the potential sale of its stake in its NPC partnership is hardly a substitute for substantive and conclusive action to resolve the outstanding concerns regarding Sasol’s Iran business. …
… Sasol’s apparent ongoing campaign to obtain eligibility for certain tax subsidies under section 6426 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) could be complicated by its extensive and ongoing Iran business. … It is highly doubtful that U.S. officials and the American public will be sympathetic to Sasol’s lobbying efforts to secure special tax benefits at a time when Sasol is engaged in an ongoing partnership with a regime that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and responsible for the deaths of countless U.S. personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Put simply, it is shameful for Sasol to directly support the Iranian regime while simultaneously lobbying U.S. officials to secure U.S. federal tax breaks. It has now been more than 19 months since Sasol announced its intention to leave Iran. Please be advised that as a result of the foregoing, as well as Sasol's singular obfuscations and delaying tactics, UANI will do everything in its power to ensure that relevant legislative and regulatory authorities in the U.S., as well as the American public at large, are appropriately apprised of Sasol’s extensive Iran business operations in sanctioned sectors of the Iranian economy. …
Since January, UANI has been publicly calling on Sasol to pull out of Iran. On February 2, 2013, the Shreveport Times published a UANI Op-Ed highlighting Sasol’s business with the Iranian regime, and Sasol’s failure to end that business.
In April, UANI put up a billboard near Sasol’s Louisiana offices, reading “BEFORE YOU BUILD HERE, STOP BUILDING IN IRAN. SASOL MUST CHOOSE: LOUISIANA OR IRAN’S TERRORIST REGIME.”
UANI’s billboard was reported as the lead story on the local KPLC-NBC “7News at Six” in Lake Charles.
Click here
to read UANI’s full letter to Sasol.
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to see KPLC’s report about UANI’s Sasol billboard.
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to view a graphic of UANI’s Sasol billboard.
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to read Ambassador Wallace’s Shreveport Times Op-Ed, “Make La.
Iran-free energy zone.”
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to send a message to Sasol.