LONDON - Energy giant Royal Dutch/Shell and BASF, the world's biggest chemicals company, Thursday announced the sale of their 50-50 petrochemical joint venture Basell to a consortium led by New York-based Access Industries for 4.4 billion euros (5.7 billion dollars), including debt.
Iran, which had also wanted to acquire Bassell, said Wednesday it had been unable to go through with the deal because of US pressure on the sellers.
The head of Iran's National Petrochemical Company (NPC), Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh, said Wednesday that Iran had won the bidding for Basell "but was informed unofficially that we could not buy it because of pressure from the United States."
"The enemy has always inflicted harm on us, and this time the United States deprived us of the benefit of buying Basell," he was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.
Basell has annual sales of six billion euros and a workforce of some 6,500.
It is the world's leading maker of polyolefins, plastics that are used in a variety of sectors, such as the food, agriculture and auto industries.
05/05/2005 13:12 GMT