Israel Refuses To Pay Old Oil Debt To Iran

Submitted by Andy Tully via OilPrice.com,

Israel is refusing to comply with an order by a Swiss court that it pay $1.1 billion that it has owed to Tehran since before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution for its share of a jointly owned oil pipeline.

“Without referring to the matter at hand, we’ll note that according to the Trading with the Enemy Act it is forbidden to transfer money to the enemy, including the Iranian national oil company,” the Israeli Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The complex dispute stems from 1968, when Shah Reza Pahlavi ruled Iran. The Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Co. (EAPC) was created as a joint venture between an Israeli company, Trans-Asiatic Oil Ltd. (TAO), which is registered in Panama, and the National Iranian Oil Co. to supply Iranian oil to Europe.

At that time, the oil was taken by ship to the Israeli port of Eilat at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. From there it moved through a network of pipelines to Ashkelon on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, then to the northern Israeli port of Haifa and on to European customers.

The National Iranian Oil Co. provided 14.75 million cubic meters of crude oil through the EAPC, earning $450 million for TAO.

With relations between the two countries now severed, EAPC now is the sole operator of more than 450 miles of the EAPC pipelines in Israel, according to the company’s website.

In its ruling, the Swiss court said the Israeli company hadn’t paid its share owed to Iran before its 1979 Islamic revolution for buying and shipping that country’s oil through an Israeli port, according to Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), quoting an “informed source” at Iran’s Presidential Center for Legal Affairs.

Before Iran’s revolution, it and Israel were allied against the Sunni Muslim Arab nations in the region, who bridled against both the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East and against Iran, a country that predominantly adheres to rival Shi’a Islam.

Now Iran and Israel are sworn enemies, with Tehran providing billions of dollars in military and financial aid to groups aligned against Israel, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

After the revolution, when Iran made clear its enmity to the Jewish state, Israel expropriated all Iran’s assets in its territory. That included effectively nationalizing the pipeline.

Iran responded with three international arbitration suits in both Swiss and French courts not only for what it said were billions owed for Israel’s operation of the pipeline, but also for other expropriated assets.

The IRNA report says the Swiss court’s ruling involves only Iran’s delivery of the 14.5 million cubic meters of crude as part of the old joint venture.

At first, in 1989, the court ordered TAO to pay $500 million, which included interest, to Fimarco Anstalt, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Co. registered in Lichtenstein before the 1979 revolution.

That ruling was put on hold, however, because of a dispute over issues including the amount of interest owed. IRNA reports that the latest ruling brings an end to that case. According to the court, Israel's liability includes not only the $1.1 billion for its share in EAPC, but an additional $7 million to cover Iran’s legal fees.

Comments

[YHC-FTSE]

Ann, that's such a kind offer to teach me, you make me want to do something nice for you in return. If you need anything from the UK, please let me know. (I've set up a disposable email address yhcftse(at)btopenworld.com). No need to tell me any of your details, I could send just send a package to you care of the nearest hotel or post office.

I'm still on Simon Black's mailing list from years back when he first started touting avacado farms in Chile. It was attractive to me then and it still is, perhaps more than ever. But as I have already explained to him on occasion, his methods are both outside my budget and slightly too convoluted for me to implement, even though I do enjoy his stories.

A bit sad to live vicariously through the lives of others, wishing I could do the same in the South Pacific, island hopping, perhaps writing, dreaming of doing something real, fulfilling and meaningful instead of merely earning my daily bread over here and participating in the insane world of competition, greed and ostentation. Well, it may be sad for me, but I do love to read about those who have managed to throw off the shackles and had the courage to live it for real away from it all. All I ever do is stack, garden and work hoping that the system won't unravel so completely that my prepping will be ineffective against the inevitable.

Perhaps envy is not the word, rather, I am proud and grateful that you have managed to do so well to live the life you have and for having the grace to tell me all about it in your posts.  :)

[honestann]

Thanks for the offer!  But your offer, plus a comment further down made me realize something that is easy to miss.  So easy to miss that even I don't usually notice unless someone raises the issue indirectly.  So here goes...

I no longer think in terms of "producing and trading".  That was the natural way to think for so long, I really should notice that I no longer think that way.  I guess it seems crazy, but "self-sufficient really does mean self-sufficient"!  Hahaha.

I can literally survive the rest of my life with ZERO external inputs.  And so, I produce in order to consume, not to trade for what I consume.  That must seem like such a trivial distinction to anyone in the normal world, but... I see from your comments, and other comments I've received over the last couple years... that the distinction is important.

I am trying to point at the following comment that I always hear:  "How will I earn a living if I get outta dodge and move to the [boonies] in the southern hemisphere?".

The answer is... you don't have to.

When you let that sink in, that's a HUGE intellectual shock.  What?  I don't need anyone?  Anyone?  Never?  Seriously?

Yes.  Seriously.

What's more, there is something so incredibly, perhaps indescribably beautiful and peaceful and happy about not needing anything from anyone... ever again.  I find it rather crazy that the magnitude of this distinction wasn't more obvious to me since the moment I got my self-sufficient systems fully up and running.

You say that all you do is stack, garden and work.

All you need to do to become self-sufficient is UN-stack, garden and work!

That's what I did, and do now.  I unstacked... meaning exchanged over 90% of the gold I stacked for the components of my self-sufficient digs (including airplane).

Now I just garden, work on tech, fly around, and play.

To be 100% precise, I do still order a few herbs and spices that I don't have growing in completely self-sufficient mode yet, but ALL my trade now amounts to less than 1 ounce of gold per year now, and I do not NEED any of what I "buy"... it merely brings me extra variety that I enjoy.  And soon, within a year or two, the very last item on my optional "enjoy list" will be produced by me.

Though... regrettably... it appears I'll never be able to own my own integrated circuit fab line!  Damn!  Of course, I don't know whether any individual on planet earth has their own fab line either.

Still... I'd really love to be that self-sufficient.  Well, that plus the few other bits and pieces of equipment I'd need to create tiny hybrid ceramic circuits (like tiny versions of circuit boards, except for connecting tiny unpackaged integrated circuits together to create what look like large packaged integrated circuit "chips").

But... sorry for the tangent.

What I wanted to express is... the incredible intellectual feeling of peace and freedom and confidence that comes from knowing "I don't need anyone... and I never will".  Wouldn't it be great to live near a few other creative individuals in the same situation?

Thanks for bringing this obvious fact to mind, one I almost never think about, even though it is really quite an extraordinary and potentially important observation that so many could take advantage of.

In case some missed this... if you set up self-sufficient digs, you don't NEED to work for anyone else ever again.  Which makes the move vastly more practical, wouldn't you all say?

Did I mention that I only spend about 10% to 20% of my time producing what I need to live this comfortable life?  I was probably flying around another 10% of the time, but now I've been most places I want to explore, so exploration will likely fall to 1% to 3% from now on.  I probably spend another 10% out under the gorgeous southern night sky and/or just playing and exploring outside (or on ZH), and probably 60% to 70% working diligently on inorganic consciousness.

Isn't that incredible when you think about it?  People work themselves to death to live a horrible, stress-filled live in the "modern world".  And I only need to spend 10% to 20% of my time to produce everything I need to live.  Where the hell did that huge efficiency from "division of labor" go?  ??? WTF ???  Have the predators-that-be put so much burden on everyone that MORE than the huge advantage of division of labor is now consumed by the predators-that-be?

Obviously so!  Isn't that's amazing?

-----

Oh, I almost forgot.  There is a new effort in the works called "Fort Galt", described at <http://www.fortgalt.com>.  This is designed for "poor folks", the smallest of the rooms costing only $10,000 USD to BUY.  To me, that room is "just too little" (and shares a bathroom), though I have to admit, I am so utterly spoiled now!  But they had other options from $20,000 to $90,000 too, the largest of which seem fairly reasonable.  The good thing about this place (besides being very inexpensive) is... being built around an extensive "makerspace" that every resident can freely access to build their projects.  And everyone is encouraged to collaborate with anyone else on whatever projects they wish.  So... this could become something quite interesting... assuming they can get over the hurdle.  On the negative side (for me, but not most others), they've decided to locate in southern Chile, where the weather is terrible (based upon my values), as in cold and rainy 6~8 months per year.  Clearly the market for more expensive escape residences is too small.  Maybe this place won't have sufficient demand either.  Time will tell.

[YHC-FTSE]

Thanks Ann. That's a lot of food for thought. I hadn't considered un-stacking to convert it into usable capital for self-sufficiency. My whole strategy (up until now) was stacking AND adding surplus towards prepping. The stack was always going to be used as my retirement fund but you have almost convinced me that I could very well use it to start my self-sufficiency project with all the mod cons. I'll have to do the sums on risk/benefits inline with my own skill sets and earning potential in the South, but it looks pretty good. The biggest barrier to me will be the emotional wrench of leaving everything and everyone I know behind, especially family - my sister and mum. They've alway been a priority for me.

Fortgalt.com is another interesting project. It's one of those things I will have to personally inspect and research before making a decision. The entry barrier is very cheap even at 100k for their "suite". It appears 30% subscribed and I wish them luck, but my initial impressions are not good. Building a "fort" in another country seems unnecessarily adversarial to the locals and my own low opinions of Ayn Rand/Rosenbaum, her philosophy of espousing selfishness as a virtue and her zionist background do not lend this proposition as an attractive one for me. I suppose I could always buy-in as a risky investment which if it works out, I could use to keep my sis and mum safe.

Expending only 10-20% of my wakeful time to producing what I need to live a comfortable life and devoting the rest towards the long list of projects I have in mind seem like heaven to me. It really looks like an ideal way to live the rest of my life and the next time I am doing recon in the region, I'll let you know.

[Circle of DNA]

Talmud prohibits giving back anything that Talmudist might have taken from  a non Talmudist. Any form of thievery from a goyim is encouraged, because anyone outside of the tribe allowed to exist only to serve the tribe.

[Equalizer]

"Now Iran and Israel are sworn enemies", well if you owed me 1.1 billion dollars and refused to pay me id be your fucking sworn enemy too!