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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Also see: another EB set of headlines on Iran from Dec 26, 2006.
U.S. puts squeeze on Iran’s oil fields
Kim Murphy, LA Times
A campaign to dry up financing for projects poses a threat to Tehran’s ability to maintain exports, analysts say.
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LONDON – As Washington wages a very public battle against Iran’s quest for nuclear power, it is quietly gaining ground on another energy front: the oil fields that are the Islamic Republic’s lifeblood.
Iran’s oil industry has raked in record amounts of cash during three years of high oil prices. But a new U.S. campaign to dry up financing for oil and natural gas development poses a threat to the republic’s ability to continue exporting oil over the next two decades, many analysts say.
The campaign comes at a moment of unique vulnerability for Iran’s oil industry, which also faces challenges from rising domestic energy consumption, international isolation, a populist spending spree by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and trouble closing contracts with foreign oil companies – a recipe for potential disaster in a nation with one of the world’s largest reservoirs of oil.
“If the government does not control the consumption of oil products in Iran … and at the same time, if the projects for increasing the capacity of the oil and protection of the oil wells will not happen, within 10 years, there will not be any oil for export,” Mohammed Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Iran’s deputy oil minister for international affairs, said in a telephone interview.
…the looming crisis stems from a series of domestic problems that have converged at a time when Iran is susceptible to U.S. attempts to capitalize on them to coerce Tehran’s compliance on the nuclear issue.
First is the condition of Iran’s aging oil fields, which have never fully recovered from damage inflicted during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
To maintain sufficient pressure to keep them pumping, Iran has to divert large amounts of natural gas that might otherwise be sold.
“You need billions of dollars invested in order to stand still – to avoid a decline,” said Manouchehr Takin, a former Iranian petroleum geologist who is a senior analyst for the Center for Global Energy Studies in London.
Likewise, increased output from refinery construction is being outpaced by the swelling number of young Iranians with a fondness for gas-guzzling cars. Heavily subsidized gasoline is just 35 cents a gallon, a price that invites smuggling, and talk about raising the price has, until recently, gone nowhere.
(7 Jan 2007)
Iran oil exports could dwindle
Reuters via The Age
OPEC member Iran is in danger of slipping down the table of oil exporters and leaving a hole in global supply as output stagnates because of a lack of investment blamed on US sanctions and political interference.
OPEC’s second largest producer could lose up to 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) of exports per year as it fails to invest enough to compensate for steep decline rates from oilfields and meet rising domestic demand, analysts say.
A report by academic Roger Stern at US John Hopkins University last week predicted Iran’s exports could dwindle to almost nothing by 2015 if it did not change its energy policies.
Iran is the world’s fourth largest exporter, shipping around 2.4 million bpd to international markets of its 3.9 million bpd output.
“The short story is that every aspect of the oil infrastructure has been starved – drilling, refineries, distribution, even the gas stations in Iran,” Stern told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday. “It’s a mess.”
(5 Jan 2007)
The Iranian petroleum crisis and United States national security
Roger Stern, PNAS
Abstract:
The U.S. case against Iran is based on Iran’s deceptions regarding nuclear weapons development. This case is buttressed by assertions that a state so petroleum-rich cannot need nuclear power to preserve exports, as Iran claims. The U.S. infers, therefore, that Iran’s entire nuclear technology program must pertain to weapons development.
However, some industry analysts project an Irani oil export decline [e.g., Clark JR (2005) Oil Gas J 103(18):34-39]. If such a decline is occurring, Iran’s claim to need nuclear power could be genuine. Because Iran’s government relies on monopoly proceeds from oil exports for most revenue, it could become politically vulnerable if exports decline.
(2 Jan 2007)
EB pointed to this article when it appeared earlier in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, commenting that it was surprisingly aggressive.
Contributor SP writes:
To my mind, the opening lines (and cited articles) of the introduction, are telling in the choice of a start point for setting the historical context viz:
“The U.S. has projected military force in the Persian Gulf for two decades. The policy aims to preempt emergence of a regional superpower (1).”
where reference 1 is Wolfowitz, P. (1992).
That is, no mention of the events of 1953.
Also, statements like “In a lawless region such as the Gulf” and “U.S. force projection prevents wars of seizure” makes me as antagonistic to the author’s work as the author obviously is towards his subject, Iran. The latter statement particularly, given what many feel about the US liberation/occupation of Iraq.
With regards to the NPT, Non Proliferation Treaty we should remember that “[t]he treaty is often summarised as having three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament, and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology.”
I would also add (and with respect to Japanese sensitivities to nuclear weapons) that to the best of my knowledge Iranian workers have not yet resorted to using buckets to mix nuclear fuel like their counterparts in Japan
Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran
Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter
SRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.
Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.
“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.
The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years
(7 Jan 2007)
Comment from War and Peace blog:
Twice a day, the clock strikes 11, right? As a friend notes, “In tomorrow’s Sunday Times (London): ‘Report: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran.’ …Of course,” he adds, “it’s not the first time the Times has run with this story. See for example [links to five earlier stories on the subject in the Times].
