Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Iranian military forces handed back control of an oil rig seized yesterday in the Persian Gulf to its Romanian owners amidst a dispute between the parties over the European company's right to recover its rigs.

``Our crew have access to the radio room and are free to move onboard,'' Gabriel Comanescu, president of Grup Servicii Petroliere (GSP), the Romanian owners of the platform, named Orizont, in a phone interview from Bucharest today.

The rig was fired at and boarded by Iranian forces yesterday amid a contractual dispute with its client Oriental Oil Co. Comanescu said three Iranian security officials remained onboard the platform and an Iranian naval vessel remains close by preventing it from moving the platform.

Iran, which holds the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves, responded yesterday to a European Union-led offer of incentives aimed at persuading it to halt uranium enrichment activities that are crucial to its nuclear program. The Islamic Republic has warned that they could disrupt energy supplies if sanctioned by the UN over its nuclear program.

Iran has ``cheaply demonstrated how easily they could disrupt oil supplies by taking the rig yesterday,'' Heinrich Matthee, Iran analyst for Control Risk Group, said in a phone interview today from London.

Crude oil for October delivery declined as much as 80 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $72.30 a barrel in after-hours trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded at $72.51 at 12:30 p.m. in London.

Iranian Denial

Hamid Reza Asefi, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, denied the country had seized the rig, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported today.

``The Romanian company, in continuation of its earlier illegal measure in moving away some drilling equipment from the area, intended to carry out its second robbery,'' Asefi said. The attempt ``was foiled thanks to the presence in the scene of Iranian police,'' he added.

The Islamic Republic accused Grup on Aug. 15 of ``hijacking'' another rig, known as the Fortuna, from the same Iranian waters where Orizont operates close to the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's daily crude supply moves on tankers.

Grup is owed $17 million in unpaid fees from Oriental Oil for the leasing of rigs, Petrescu said.

The Romanian company, which is seeking to reclaim unpaid fees through the International Court of Arbitration in Paris, is now lobbying Iranian authorities to allow it to remove Orizont from the country's waters, Comanescu said.

Oriental Oil subcontracted both rigs to PetroIran Development Co., a unit of the state-run National Iranian Oil Co., without Grup Servicii's consent, he added.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andy Critchlow in Dubai at at acritchlow1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 23, 2006 08:13 EDT