Iran signs major gas deal with Austria's OMV: reports

Sat Apr 21, 5:46 AM ET

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran signed a major gas development and production agreement with Austrian energy group OMV on Saturday, official Iranian media reported.

State radio estimated the total value of the deal at $18 billion but other Iranian media did not mention any figures.

OMV officials in Tehran declined comment on the reports, saying information would be made available later on Saturday.

Iran sits atop the world's second-largest gas reserves after Russia but politics, sanctions and construction delays have slowed the country's gas development and analysts say it is unlikely to become a major exporter for a decade.

The United States has urged its allies not to invest in Iran as part of a campaign to force Tehran to stop its nuclear programme. Washington is concerned the programme is aimed at making atomic bombs but Iran says it is meant for electricity production so that it can export more of its valuable oil and gas.

Iran's huge oil and gas reserves are a strong magnet for international energy companies despite the political risks.

"Officials of Iran's Oil Ministry and the managing director of the Austrian OMV have signed a gas agreement worth $18 billion," state radio said.

Under the deal, OMV would cooperate with Iran in producing liquefied natural gas, the radio added. State television said OMV would also purchase gas from Iran.

The Islamic republic is keen to become a big gas exporter but has been slow to develop its resources. LNG is natural gas altered for transportation in special tankers.

Gholamhossein Nozari, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said three agreements had been signed with OMV, concerning the development of phase 12 of the South Pars gas field as well as construction of an LNG plant.

"Negotiations with the Austrian OMV company ended with an agreement that this company ... participates in the upstream and downstream activities of this project," he was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

He said OMV would take a 10 percent stake in the new plant, from which it would buy 10.2 million tonnes of LNG per year. The report did not give details on when construction would start.

The IRNA news agency said Iran would deliver five billion cubic metres of natural gas per year to Europe via the planned Nabucco pipeline, a 4.6 billion euro project to transport gas from Turkey to Austria. OMV heads the Nabucco consortium.

US nuclear worker took software to Iran: FBI

Sat Apr 21,2007

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A former engineer at the largest U.S. nuclear power plant was arrested on suspicion of taking software codes and using them to download details of plant control rooms and reactors while in Iran, officials said on Saturday.

The software involved was used to train plant operators and there was no indication of a terrorist connection, said Deborah McCarley, an FBI spokeswoman in Phoenix.

The FBI arrested Mohammad Alavi, who worked at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station outside Phoenix, earlier this month at Los Angeles International Airport when he arrived on a flight from Iran, she said.

He is charged with a single count of violating a trade embargo that bars Americans from exporting goods and services to Iran.

Electronic records show that Alavi's name and password were used to download software registration in October 2006 from a computer in Tehran, according to an FBI affidavit.

Alavi, 49, a U.S. citizen who was born in Tehran, denies wrongdoing, his lawyer, Milagros Cisneros, told the Arizona Republic newspaper.

On Friday a federal judge in Phoenix denied Alavi bail, saying he posed a substantial flight risk, the newspaper reported.

Alavi is accused of removing the software -- which mimics plant operations -- before he quit his job at Palo Verde last August. Export of the software, without prior authorization, is illegal, according to the affidavit.

Alavi faces up to 21 months in prison if convicted of the charge, according to the Arizona Republic.

A spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co., which runs the nuclear power plant, said that "because of existing security and safeguards in place at Palo Verde, the health and safety of the public were never compromised and at no time was the physical or cyber security of the plant compromised."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February increased its scrutiny of Palo Verde, which has experienced operational problems over the last few years.

Located about 50 miles west of Phoenix, the plant supplies power to around 4 million customers in Arizona and other southwestern states

Iran: West should build nuclear plants

TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian official invited Western nations Friday to help build nuclear power plants across
Iran, reiterating his country's insistence on pursuing an atomic program as a European official said the two sides had agreed to discuss the standoff next week.

The invitation is a test of the West's "good will" and could help restore Iran's trust in the West after subjecting Iranians to intense pressure to suspend nuclear work, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said.

He commented as a
European Union official said negotiators for Iran and the EU would meet Wednesday for the first time since February to assess the possibility of resuming negotiations over Tehran's suspect nuclear program.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting, gave no details of the planned talks between EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iran's chief international negotiator, Ali Larijani.

"It will not be negotiations in themselves. We will examine the possibilities of what can be done," the official said.

Solana led largely unsuccessful diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to suspend uranium enrichment before the
U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions over Tehran's defiance of the council's demand that it halt such work.

Solana negotiates on behalf of the permanent Security Council members — the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China — as well as Germany.

Those nations have offered Iran a package of economic and other incentives, including assistance for a peaceful nuclear power program to produce electricity, but insist Tehran first stop uranium enrichment.

The U.S. and other nations suspect Iran's government is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies that, saying its only goal is the peaceful use of nuclear reactors to generate electricity.

Iran has started feeding small amounts of uranium gas into centrifuges that can enrich it to weapons-grade level and is already running more than 1,300 of the machines, according to an
International Atomic Energy Agency document obtained this week by The Associated Press.

The confidential document — a letter to Iranian officials from a senior IAEA staff member — also protests an Iranian decision to prevent the agency's U.N. inspectors from visiting the country's heavy water reactor that, when built, will produce plutonium.

Both enriched uranium and plutonium can be used to construct nuclear warheads.

Aghazadeh told Iran's official IRNA news agency that the government will never again stop uranium enrichment and vowed it will work around the clock to install even more centrifuges at its underground enrichment plant in Natanz.

Aghazadeh said Iran showed "good will" when it suspended uranium enrichment in 2003 for three years, but lost trust in Western nations after learning they were "seeking a permanent halt to Iran's nuclear activities" rather than guarantees the program would not be diverted to weapons making.

"Therefore, we won't repeat this experience," he said of another suspension.