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Iran oil industry ails as no minister approved by Majlis |
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Friday, 02 December 2005 |
 NCRI - Iran's oil industry is not just in the doldrums, it is sinking, said Christian Oliver of the Reuters.
The world's fourth biggest crude producer has not had an oil minister
since August, meaning output loss continues unabated, new production
deals have no hope of getting signed and Tehran's voice in OPEC is
barely a whisper.
Mullahs’ President Ahmadinejad has failed to get three of his close
allies appointed to the most prestigious job in Iran's cabinet - vetoed
by Majlis deputies (mullahs’ parliamentarians) who are angered at not
being consulted about this linchpin post.
"This limbo in the oil ministry is definitely causing us a lot of
trouble and the longer it goes on, the more serious it becomes," said
Mohammad Mehdi Jabbarzadeh, a lawmaker on mullahs’ budget commission.
Ahmadinejad is due to nominate a fourth candidate on Sunday.
Last week, moments after parliament rejected Ahmadinejad's third
candidate, Mohsen Tasalloti, lawmaker Kazem Jalali neatly summed up the
malaise: "The current situation weakens our stance in OPEC and will
diminish our chances of co-operation with foreign companies because it
indicates instability.”
In his address to lawmakers before their vote, Tasalloti addressed the
fundamental problem the regime must solve: “The Islamic Republic is
losing more than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of its output capacity
each year.”
It needs to crank up new production to preserve its slice of the cake
in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. At the
moment, it is battling to keep capacity steady at just over four
million bpd.
Preserving this output means investing in new fields and that needs a minister who can sign deals.
Signing big contracts with foreign firms is politically toxic in Iran,
although most analysts agree Tehran needs international know-how to up
output. Without an oil minister, the main pending projects remain
unsigned.
Mullahs’ deputy oil minister Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian told Iranian media
this week that the lack of an oil minister was also delaying a plan to
pipe Iran's gas to India.
Despite sitting on the world's second biggest reserves of natural gas, Iran has been slow to develop these resources.
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