#Iran’s New President Picks Former Gas Chief Owji as Oil Minister - Bloomberg

Iran’s New President Picks Former Gas Chief Owji as Oil Minister - Bloomberg

Iran’s new president picked the former head of the country’s natural-gas company as oil minister, at a time when the Islamic Republic is engaged in fraught negotiations with world powers to revive petroleum exports.

Javad Owji, who hasn’t previously held a full ministerial post but was once managing director of National Iranian Gas Co., was proposed for the role in a list of cabinet ministers presented to lawmakers by President Ebrahim Raisi. He would replace retiring veteran Bijan Namdar Zanganeh.

Owji was more recently the head of Sina Energy Development Co., owned by the state-run charity Bonyad-e Mostazafan that’s controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His career has included senior positions at other energy and petrochemicals companies such as Petro Mofid Development Holding, which is also ultimately controlled by Khamenei’s office.

Owji was sanctioned by the U.S. in November 2020 for his involvement at Sina Energy, part of Washington’s crackdown on Khamenei’s Bonyad-e Mostazafan Foundation, a religious endowment for war veterans and the poor that controls a large number of factories, mines and construction firms. The U.S. Treasury also targeted his predecessor, Zanganeh, around the same time amid a raft of sanctions on major officials in Iran’s oil sector.