Iranian media have reported that the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) lost its appeal in court and failed to prevent the transfer of a high-value building in central London as part of a $2.4 billion arbitration award owed to the Emirati company Crescent Petroleum.
According to these reports, the British Court of Appeal upheld a previous ruling that the property had been unlawfully transferred to a trust to keep it out of the reach of creditors.
So far, Crescent Petroleum has managed to recover part of the damages related to the Crescent contract through foreign court rulings.
On April 18, 2024, a British court ordered the seizure of this NIOC-owned building, valued at £100 million ($125 million), located in central London.
The building, known as NIOC House, is located near the British Parliament and Westminster Abbey and had been owned by Iran for about fifty years.
Iranian domestic media reported that Crescent Petroleum argued the transfer of the building was intended to prevent creditors from accessing it and therefore filed a complaint with the court.
According to these reports, the initial court had ruled in favor of Crescent, nullifying the transfer of ownership, and on September 29, the Court of Appeal rejected NIOC’s objection and upheld the previous decision ordering the confiscation of the NIOC House building.
The Crescent contract is one of the most politically contentious cases in Iran’s oil and gas industry.
The contract, signed in 2002, involved the daily sale of 500 million cubic feet of sour gas from Iran’s Salman oil field to Crescent Petroleum.
However, in one of the related court rulings, Iran’s regime was ordered to pay $607 million in damages to Crescent Petroleum for failing to uphold the contract.
Confiscation of NIOC assets in favor of Crescent
The National Iranian Oil Company previously maintained offices in five countries: the United Kingdom, China, Singapore, the Netherlands, and India.
After the seizure of its offices in London and Rotterdam, the company no longer has any offices in Europe.
Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s regime foreign ministry, described reports in February 2025 about the seizure of another NIOC building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as “inaccurate,” but did not clarify what actually happened to the property.
According to published reports, despite NIOC’s objections, the transfer of its Rotterdam office building—worth $2.6 billion in debt repayment to Crescent Petroleum—was approved, and the building was officially transferred to the Dutch company Heuvel.
The building, which had been seized under an international arbitration ruling, was sold to Heuvel on April 20, 2023, through a public auction.
The state-run daily Shargh reported that NIOC had previously asked the Dutch court to annul the April 2023 auction and return ownership of the building, arguing that, as state property, it should be immune from seizure or sale under international law.
In response, the auction’s winning company, Heuvel, stated that it had purchased the building in a legal auction and therefore was the rightful owner.
Ultimately, the court rejected all of NIOC’s requests, including its bid to reclaim the property.
The state-run Iran newspaper also reported that the seizure of the building was related to claims arising from the cancellation of the Crescent contract.
The paper described the loss as the result of “political maneuvering by behind-the-scenes actors” over the cancellation of the Crescent deal.
