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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iran to rely on domestic gasoline from September
2006-04-22
TEHERAN - IranÂ’s president said on Friday the country should depend on domestic gasoline rather than imports in the second half of the Iranian year, which starts in September, and would have to impose rationing from then.
When's the new moon in September?
Iran’s domestic production of gasoline does not meet local demand, forcing the world’s fourth largest exporter of oil to import oil products. Parliament has cut the budget for gasoline imports this Iranian year, which began in March. “We can import for the first six months of the year, and it means that for the second six months we should consume domestic production only, which means we would naturally move towards some kind of a rationing,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television.

Many Iranian officials have stressed IranÂ’s dependence on imported gasoline threatens national security. But diplomats and political analysts have said the West would probably shy away from slapping sanctions on gasoline sales to Iran because that could spark political volatility.
They say that like it would be a bad thing.
Posted by:Steve White

#11  I agree Steve, sounds like new targets to me.
Posted by: Beau   2006-04-22 21:19  

#10  Nice gasoline storage tanks ya got there, Mahmoud. Be a shame if anything happened to 'em.
Posted by: SteveS   2006-04-22 18:48  

#9  The issue here is that gasoline sells for about 10c a liter in Iran and they need to import a lot of it at a cost of about 80c a liter. The government has to subsidize the difference.

With rising oil prices Iran should have plenty of spare cash to subsidize the necessary imports. So this is probably just an accounting problem - the budget says they have x dollars, when in reality they have x+y dollars.

OTOH that extra money may be leaking away due to corruption, which leads to the paradoxical situation that as the price of oil and hence the price of imported gasoline goes up, Iran can afford to import less gasoline.

Rationing would likely spark riots, so they won't do unless they have to.

My prediction is Ahmadinejad magically finds the money to pay for imports after September.
Posted by: phil_b   2006-04-22 16:54  

#8  It's just a cover for getting a rationing system in place for whenever it may be needed. Like maybe next month after the fireworks begin and the insurers for the gasoline tankers won't let them enter the Persian Gulf.

As for processing uranium "on Russian soil" and other delaying tactics, they are all irrelevant unless unfettered short-notice inspections are allowed. If Ahmadinejad knows what's good for him (and there are no signs of that), he will press for a stable situation before the fall 2006 U.S. elections are over. A President Bush with nothing to lose politically will not be healthy for Ahmadinejad. Personally, I expect the fireworks to begin sometime in the next month or so.
Posted by: Darrell   2006-04-22 14:59  

#7  Ummmmm - lessee. They're building gasoline refineries in Iran so they won't need imports.

They've set a deadline of September, so they're probably planning something nasty for August or September that they think might get their gasoline imports cut off.

And they expect to protect their new refineries how, exactly?

Just sayin', 's all.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2006-04-22 12:07  

#6  and the breaking news of a Russia-Iran agreement on enrichment buys Mamhoud the couple of months he needs.

The "agreement" gets him off the April 28 deadline and will be worth months of stalling. He"ll even agree to "inspections" to buy this time.

Late August it is.
Posted by: Thinemp Whimble2412   2006-04-22 10:33  

#5  So Mahmoud has something planned for late August that will result in immediate loss of international gasoline to Iran. Strike and hunker down.
Posted by: Thinemp Whimble2412   2006-04-22 10:26  

#4  Yep. My bad.
Posted by: PBMcL   2006-04-22 00:46  

#3  Try filling the tank when Iranian production goes to zero.
Posted by: ed   2006-04-22 00:45  

#2  new = none
Posted by: Frank G   2006-04-22 00:38  

#1  When's the new moon in September?

Moon? We don' need no steenkin' moon!
Posted by: PBMcL   2006-04-22 00:35  

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