U.S. puts squeeze on Iran's oil fields

[Jcrowley]

U.S. puts squeeze on Iran's oil fields
A campaign to dry up financing for projects poses a threat to Tehran's ability to maintain exports, analysts say.
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
12:18 AM PST, January 7, 2007

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.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iranoil7jan07,0,4572971.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Possumpoint]

1. Sounds Better To Me

then throwing bombs and troops at them. Hope it works in changing the regime in Iran so no one has to even think of taking more drastic action.

[Jcrowley]

2. It's called

economic colonialism. It's stealing.

It's not okay.

[madrchsod]

3. the united states government and the oil companies have been trying

to break the back of the Iranian government since 1979. as long as the oil companies decide our middle east policy then this will always be the status quo. iran has worked around the united states to finance their projects since the sanctions of 1979 and will continue to...oil and gas will always find buyers.

[northofdenali]

4. If anyone doesn't think this was planned, read hatrack's post -

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x77608

In E&E - Deadeye Dick in 1999 in a speech to the Oil Council -

terrifying.