While I’m listening to all the goofy post-game interviews after the Seahawks victory, I noticed this headline at Yahoo: “
Iran Sanctions Could Drive Oil Past $100.”
A surge in oil prices last week to almost $70 a barrel on concerns about the restart of Iran’s nuclear program only hints at what may lie ahead.
Prices could soar past $100 a barrel, experts say, if the U.N. Security Council authorizes trade sanctions against the Middle Eastern nation, which the West accuses of trying to make nuclear bombs, and Iran curbs oil exports in retaliation. A sharp global economic slowdown could follow.
That’s the dilemma the United States and European nations face as they decide whether to act. But Iran would also pay a hefty price if the petro-dollars that now represent 80 percent of export revenues are reduced, potentially stirring civil unrest in a nation with a 14 percent unemployment rate.
“They would shoot themselves in the foot,” said Mustafa Alani, director of national security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. “It’s one thing to test the market psychology, it’s another to take the actual step and stop oil exports.”
Iran, the second-largest oil producer within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, exports roughly 2.5 million barrels per day — 1 million barrels more than current excess production capacity worldwide. It also controls the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane in the Middle East.
“Even if Iran pulled a small amount of its oil off the market, say it pulled a half million barrels a day, I could see oil prices literally jumping over the $100 per barrel mark,” said James Bartis, a senior researcher at Rand Corp. … Read all
At $100.00 dollars a barrel, it will force alternative fuels and energy to the market place.
Willie Nelson should run the Dept. of Energy
🙂
bushco and the oilmen just have to make more $ no matter who gets hurt!
Hey, maybe all those folks that voted so against their own economic interests will get a clue.
This is the deal folks:
If you’re not in the top 5% income bracket – you’re getting screwed!
If you’re concerned about the future of your country – you’re getting screwed!
If you’re a moral person – you’re getting screwed!
If you’re in the top 5% income bracket, don’t care about your country and have no morals – you might be OK, but you’re really trusting an incompetent moron and you don’t trust anybody so good luck with that.
you’re getting conned.
Family financial net worth over 20-30 years–and this is BEFORE Bush.
From Scientific American.
Look at the top 1% (minus the winners). Barely climbing.
The United States is a club smaller than a modest high school.
Much of the whole battle concerning Iran has little to do with the oil and a lot to do with the natural gas, of which Iran is the second biggest sorce for that commodity after Russia. and of course, going into the future, whoever controls the broader energy reserves of the Caspian region at large is going to have a lot of power to leverage industrial and emerging industrial economies worldwide.
Brief current summary on the natural gas question vis a vis Iran here.
The idea that Cheney and his band of insane neocons have even the slightest regard for the welfare or safety of human beings, or that they might put such regard before their own megalomaniacal interests with respect to achieving hegemony over the entire civilized world; well such an assumption, to me, is categorically absurd.
None of the talk about freedom, liberty, democracy, or security coming from these lunatics means anything. It’s all a smokescreen to mask their abiding and insane ambition to control the world.
If China, Russia and Iran form some sort of “pipeline aliance” with respect to ebergy resources, Cheney and Co will have to invade Canada to seize the oil sands region in Alberta. And hardly anyone will be able to afford to drive a car in America after that because the cost of extracting that oil wil mean the price per barrel will just keep going higher while the environment is further destroyed at the same time.
In the little Cheney rant in my comment above I forgot to add that the idea that the Cheney gang cared at all about whether fuel prices here in the US went up dramatically or not as a result of their actions is also, IMHO, absurd. These people don’t have any real regard for the best interests of anyone but themselves.
From what I have read, the Iranians were going to deal their oil in euros instead of dollars. Now that would do America a great deal of harm. I also heard that this is what Iraq was considering as well. So if this is true and the urgent need to bomb or invade is the same…I am inclined to believe this. I evenheard that the South American countries that were selling oil were considering going to euros as well.. if this is all true, would you not see where Cheney and his crew of players were angry over this and had to do something about it? NOw, of course, I am only repeating something I read.
Many major nations are considering or are already embarked upon strategies to diversify their holdings away from the US dollar to some degree as protection, since there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty as to whether current US fiscal policy is so reckless that the dollar might be a bad investment. China has let it be known recently that they are considering such diversification, seen as a signal they have major anxiety over the fact that they hold so much of the US debt.
Also, I believe Iran has already pulled a substantial percentage of it’s holdings out of Western financial institutions in advance of possible action by the West to seize such assets as part of some sort of sanctions thing, just like the US did back in the ’70s.
There has been talk of an Iranian Oil Bourse since late, summer.
A couple of articles from Aug are Here and Here. In addition to the issue of a competing oil trading bourse, both of these look into the geopolitical aspects of such a move.
Last I heard/read [and I am unable to locate the source but seem to recall a diary here or at dkos regarding this issue] the tentative opening is scheduled for mid March of this year.
Interesting that that date seems to correspond with some of the planning scenarios re: preemptive strikes and sanctions, is it not?
Peace
Isn’t it ironic in that the neocon financial wranglings have long sought to demonize Iran and in the process, helped enable Iran to supply the pipeline that’s been the source of trouble. Had India been able to get that from neocon finances/political power, which Cheney had been trying to do since early 90s, Enron’s collapse would have probably not happened.
Soj wrote a couple of diaries about the Iranian oil bourse here and here.
Interesting timing indeed.
In June 2003, oil prices were around $20.00 bbl on concerns that the invasion of Iraq went too smoothly.
They screw us with the prices because they can and one excuse is as good as another.
Highlighted Documents
Comes so hard
What you got
Never got me far
There’s no stoppin’
Everything coming
When tomorrow hits
When tomorrow hits
When tomorrow hits
When tomorrow hits
It’ll hit you hard
When tomorrow hits
It’ll hit you hard
When tomorrow hits
It’ll hit you hard
When tomorrow hits
That’s the low down
Remember Mudhoney? That was probably my favorite song of theirs from back in the day. Or to take another pop culture reference, tomorrow’s gonna get Medieval on our asses.
If Iran can cut production by one-fifth and cause the price of oil to increase by over 40%, how exactly does Iran lose?
. . . of course, weighs in over at the ET.
It’s not good. Title says it all – “We’re doomed.”
way to start a rainy Monday. Now I’ll pop over to Clusterfuck Nation and get really freaked out. 😉
I was excited last week to learn that three ethanol plants are “being constructed” here until I learned they currently consist of double-wide office trailers. Not a shovel has broken ground toward their actual construction.
On one site, they’ve amassed $80 million in venture capital but require another $20 million which was to be grants from the state of North Carolina. Those grants have now been withheld due to state budget constraints and a debate on whether the money would be better spent repairing the state’s roads. WTF!
I can’t give a news link to this info because I got it from the fellow who pumped my septic tank. He got it from one of the officers of this venture when he installed the septic tanks for their trailer this week. They are currently scrambling for more investors and hoping to have the plant online by 2015…