China could lose a $4.7 billion contract to develop Iran’s giant South Pars gas field if delays on the project persist, an Iranian deputy oil minister said. The warning comes as Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, has vowed to shake up the country’s largest industry, which has suffered years of decline thanks to mismanagement and the effect of international sanctions. State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. was awarded a $4.7 billion project in South Pars in 2009, after international pressure forced France’s SA to pull out. The South Pars field is the largest gas reservoir in the world not mixed with oil. But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mansour Moazami, Iran’s deputy oil minister for planning, said there had been “many, many, many delays for the contract in South Pars.” “We are giving a first warning, a second warning. Maybe in the end, we will terminate the […]