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.
