TEHRAN, Aug 5: Iran said on Friday the European Union had offered to back it as the main oil transit route from Central Asia to tempt Tehran to freeze its nuclear fuel work, but a summary of the EU’s proposals contained no such offer. Iran, home to the world’s second largest oil and gas reserves, has long promoted itself as an alternative route for delivering landlocked Caspian oil to world markets, but has met opposition from the United States, its political rival.

“In the proposal, they have supported the idea of Iran being the main energy transit route to Europe from Central Asia,” a senior Iranian close to the EU negotiations said. But a summary of the package delivered to Iran by Britain, France and Germany made no mention of supporting an Iranian oil pipeline. “The summary contains all the substance of the full proposals,” an EU diplomat said in Brussels.

In reference to energy, the proposal says the EU is prepared to declare Iran a long-term source of oil and gas. Asked later if the EU was ready to support such an oil transit pipeline from Central Asia to Europe, a senior French official said: “There are a lot of ideas. Here, we haven’t gone into a lot of detail.

“We are certainly ready to envisage discussing with them. European energy supplies, different routes — oil and gas pipelines — and to help them with the installation of these infrastructures.”

Even if the EU did make reference to a pipeline from Central Asia, analysts say this would give Iran little incentive to ditch its nuclear activities.

“Iran would have stood to gain more financially in the early 1990s (as a Caspian export route) before rival pipelines were built,” said Manouchehr Takin of the Centre for Global Energy Studies.

“Declaring Iran a route for Caspian oil would not be an incentive at all,” said an Iranian analyst.

The main route now for crude from Kazakh oilfields to world markets is via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to a terminal near the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. A rival pipeline through Turkey, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route, is to start carrying Azeri crude in the autumn, with capacity set to rise to one million barrels per day by the end of the decade.

Washington, keen to bypass Russia and Iran, has backed the route via Turkey.

A senior official from the Turkish energy ministry insisted that Turkey was the most suitable route for transporting Central Asian oil and gas to Europe. “There is no chance of the project which the EU is said to support coming to fruition,” the official said.

He said there was no way the United States and Russia would look favourably on such a project. —Reuters