More Problems On The Home Front

I reported a while back on Iran's Home Front Problems. It appears they have some new problems. They can't deliver on their promises. Natural gas deliveries to be exact. The Washington Times reports:

Iran has stopped exports of natural gas to Turkey due to a tight domestic market caused by cold weather, but vows to restart shipments soon.

Iran supplies Turkey from the Tabriz to Ankara pipeline as part of a 1996 contract.

This year Turkey was to receive a total of 10 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas, the state-run IRNA news agency reports.

"Currently our export to Turkey is zero," Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said.

He said he called the Turkish energy minister and apologized "and promised to address these problems as soon as possible."

"We hope the second phase of Parsian Refinery, in the southern province of Fars, will come on stream within the next ten days, and we can resume gas export to Turkey," he said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency.

Turkish news sources report:
Iran, which was selling 27 million cubic meters natural gas to Turkey daily before December, has gradually dropped this amount to 4 million cubic meters since then. The Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Veziri Hamaneh, calling Turkish Minister for Energy Hilmi Guler after the complete cutoff, told him that because of high domestic consumption associated with the extremely cold weathers they had to make this decision. Noting that they called on the Iranian people to decrease their gas consumption, the Iranian minister said that if the Iranians would be more responsible he could guarantee that gas exports to Turkey would resume soon. Hamaned further said they hoped to activate the natural gas facility in the southern province of Fars and resume gas flow to Turkey.
In a country where socialist central planning is the order of the day, this has got to hurt. On top of that Iran has been unable to meet its OPEC quota for the last 18 months. Another economic hurt.

H/T reader Paul.

Welcome Instapundit readers.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 01.05.07 at 04:56 AM





TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/4379






Comments

The real problem's using an apostrophe on a plural. Probably a holdover from the "Iran's" subhead in the story.

The actual real problem, of course, is posting before 5 AM.

Socrates   ·  January 5, 2007 10:55 AM

Yeah. What was I thinking.

I'll fix it.

M. Simon   ·  January 5, 2007 09:06 PM

If I was the propaganda minister of Iran I would use stories like this to justify Nuclear energy at home.

Peter   ·  January 6, 2007 10:12 AM

If I was the propaganda minister of Iran I would use stories like this to justify Nuclear energy at home.

NPR had on a 'economic geographer' pretty much making that case Thursday, and recommending a policy of "do nothing" - for 3 or 4 years.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6722166
Hmmm, I wonder way all these stories are popping up at once?

junyo   ·  January 6, 2007 10:26 AM

This is an example of Government regulation of business...

A country prohibits the delivery of a product to another country - not through law, but through fiat...

Tells you a couple of things or so about the 'power' of Iran. It gets expensive to fund Hezbollah, the rebuilding of Lebanon, the Shi'ite militia in Iraq, a budding nuclear program, and defend the borders against enemies foreign and domestic. To top it off the stupid indiginous squatters want heat in the winter. Don't they have the jihadi zeal???

The Sitzkrieg tactic will work in Iran...

Boghie   ·  January 6, 2007 10:27 AM
"...they called on the Iranian people to decrease their gas consumption,"

Deja vu. Tell them to try brodcasting a message from the president's living quarters wearing a nice comfy cardigan.

Reid   ·  January 6, 2007 11:45 AM

We've seen elsewhere that oil production has been falling there (Reynolds has the link from about a week ago), due to the lack of investment in keeping their infrastructure up.

Of course, the OPEC nations also unilaterially raised their estimates of potential reserves, a claim that has not been verified.

So, they're either running low because they can't get it out of the ground anymore, or because they don't have it in the ground to begin with. Either way, it's not a good sign.

Bill Peschel   ·  January 6, 2007 01:03 PM

When your gas price is heavily subsidized, why conserve? Also, if you don't really like the government, you might turn up the heat, so to speak. Unlike Bill P above, I think this is a wonderful, glorious, sign.

jpickens   ·  January 6, 2007 04:56 PM

When you are no longer a petroleum exporting country, do they kick you out of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries?

Eric Anondson   ·  January 6, 2007 06:10 PM

When they start pumping the water out, they pumped in to force the oil to the surface, so they can skim the floating oil off its surface you will KNOW they are OUT.

JimboNC   ·  January 6, 2007 08:50 PM

When they start pumping the water out,...

Or it could mean they were producing too fast. In some situations, that can make the interface between the water and oil go unstable, leaving a lot of oil trapped in the formation behind water, where it is much harder to extract.

Anonymous   ·  January 8, 2007 08:30 AM

Post a comment

You may use basic HTML for formatting.





Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)



January 2007
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31      

ANCIENT (AND MODERN)
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR


Search the Site


E-mail




Classics To Go

Classical Values PDA Link



Archives




Recent Entries



Links



Site Credits