Iran’s oil exports plummeted 24 percent over the 12-month period ending last February and energy revenues dropped by $19 billion, according to reports published by the semi-official Fars News Agency.
Oil production also has dropped, primarily due to the international sanctions that make it harder for other countries to invest in the Islamic Republic’s gas and oil industry. The Financial Times reported in May that oil production dropped by 300,000 barrels a day.
The drop in revenues comes at the same time that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as continues his spending spree for more nuclear sites and advanced weapons, leaving his regime with little money to compensate for the loss of investments in local energy projects.
Despite the government’s public scoffing that sanctions are useless, government officials privately told the London Guardian, "The president doesn't like to hear bad news. It appears the people around him don't tell him when there's something wrong. But there are others raising alarms about the economy. The government isn't panicking yet, but it should be."
Iran suffers from triple trouble: limited refining capacity for domestic demand of oil, cancellations of oil contracts from Far Eastern countries seeking lower prices elsewhere, and the United Nations Security Council’s sanctions that are cutting into foreign investments to expand refining facilities.
Iran’s ability to refine crude oil already had been severely crippled before the sanctions: it never fully recovered from the effects of the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. Growing domestic demand for refined oil also has limited the amount of crude oil it can export.
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7 comments:
Maybe it wont be necessary to drop white phosphorus bombs on households and cluster bombs on children playing in the street?
a couple of daiset cutters over tehran, (15,000 pound bombs) would solve the problem completely.
sanctions are a nothing but a slap in the hand with a ruler.
3:37.......shame of you for suggesting that a daisy cutter be dropped on those poor people. Haven't you heard? The Daisy Cutter has been replaced with the M.O.A.B. - nicknamed the Mother Of All Bombs. The most powerful conventional weapon in the world. We should use the M.O.A.B. ;)
Sanctions are NOT working. The knowledge that they are about to get the ass whipping they've been begging for 30 years for has them trembling. I say turn all those screaming, American hating assholes into radioactive dust!
The Iranian PEOPLE aren't the problem-- it's the radical leadership.
Precision strikes will be needed.
But the best deal would have been the recent revolt by the people (if it had worked, but Obama remained SILENT, not voicing our support, so the people thought we might leave them swinging in the breeze-- a fair assumption, considering who we have running our country at the moment.)
A revolution is brewing there, just like here, and for the same reason-- fascist leadership.
ditto 9:26
9:26, I think your logic is quite flawed. Lets imagine that the current "revolution" here is brewing, so the Chinese go public and say "we support you crazies on the right who were pissed that you lost an election and who fall for every conspiracy in the book. We support you". Imagine how quickly any opposition would lose credibility once the public saw the support from a FOREIGN power. Same goes for Iran.
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