“I personally think none of us will be able to get around it,” Vitol’s chief executive Ian Taylor said last week, commenting on the effects that renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran will have on the oil industry. The sanctions, to go into effect later in the year, have already started to bite. French Total, for one, announced earlier this month it will suspend all work on the South Pars gas field unless it receives a waiver from the U.S. Treasury Department—something rather unlikely to happen. The French company has a lot of business in the United States and cannot afford to lose its access to the U.S. financial system. So, unless the EU strikes back at Washington and somehow manages to snag a waiver for its largest oil company, Total will be pulling out of Iran. Other supermajors have not dared enter the country, so there will be no […]