Oil prices 'could surge' if Iran crisis worsens

ArticleData Array ( [Article] => Array ( [article_id] => 1032801 [headline] => Oil prices 'could surge' if Iran crisis worsens [abstract] => Analysts warn world oil prices could spike higher if the post election violence worsens in Iran. [keywords] => oil, prices, iran, election [content] =>

Analysts warn world oil prices could spike higher if the post election violence worsens in Iran.

Iran has ruled out cancelling the disputed presidential June 12 vote, as the international community voices increasing alarm at a violence crackdown on opposition demonstrators.

Iran currently produces about 3.8 billion barrels of crude oil per day and is the third largest producer after Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Analysts now fear the post election unrest could force the government to cut off oil supplies or block the Strait of Hormuz – a crucial passageway for oil tankers.

"There could be a rude awakening (for the oil market) if tensions in Iran escalate further," said VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov.
  
"Not only does the country pump a significant amount of OPEC crude, it also controls the Strait of Hormuz through which around 40 percent of global seaborne oil flows daily."

Oil prices have fallen heavily since the election, dampened by the dire global economic outlook and a stronger dollar.

New York's main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in August traded at about $US67 per barrel yesterday.

That compared with more than 72 dollars one week earlier.
  
"Although the markets are clearly not fazed by developments there thus far, we would not dismiss the likelihood that the (Iran) situation could come back to have a more forceful impact on oil prices -- particularly if the opposition manages to pull off a national strike that could potentially spread to the oil sector," said MF Global analyst Edward Meir.
  
"Needless to say, the odds arrayed against the opposition are daunting, as many of its leaders are jailed, while communications among the remaining are severely hampered and monitored.
  
"Nevertheless, the situation remains very fluid and anything is possible at this stage."

After Saudi Arabia, Iran is the second largest member of the 12-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which accounts for 40 percent of all world crude supplies.
  
"There is no indication that (Iranian) oil production will be affected," said Francis Perrin, director of the journal Arab Oil and Gas.
  
He added that traders expected other OPEC member nations would compensate for any potential loss in Iranian oil output.
  
Analyst Nimit Khamar, at Sucden Financial Research, noted that there had not yet been any disruption.
  
"Post-election protests continue, but there does not appear to be any disruptions to oil supply yet.
  
"However, there is market talk that Iranians are trying to organise a national strike including the oil industry in reaction to the reappointment of Ahmadinejad."

OPEC's member countries have spare capacity of around six million barrels per day, according to a recent estimate from the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
 

[start_date] => 24 June 2009 | 12:05:17 PM [comments_allowed] => 0 [source] => SBS staff and agencies [commentCount] => 0 [video] => [image] => Array ( [caption] => Analysts warn world oil prices could spike higher if the post election violence worsens in Iran. (REUTERS) [useRegularImage] => 1 [media_library_id] => 83872 [site_id] => 1 [media_library_group_id] => 0 [media_usage_id] => 0 [filename] => oil-tops-71-after-large-drop-in-u-s-crud-743089379-large.jpg [title] => oil-tops-71-after-large-drop-in-u-s-crud-743089379-large.jpg [description] => [type] => [height] => 0 [width] => 0 [source] => [video_hi] => [video_lo] => [section] => [display_order] => 0 [create_date] => 2009-06-10 22:06:08 [active] => 1 [media_usage] => Article Large [usageWidth] => 300 [usageHeight] => 225 ) [imagePath] => http://media.sbs.com.au/news/upload_media/ [audio] => [reporter] => [relatedLinks] => Array ( [3] => Array ( [id] => 1032736 [label] => Obama toughens his talk on Iran [display_order] => 0 [type] => Article ) [2] => Array ( [id] => 1031946 [label] => Oil falls towards $69 as bearish U.S. gasoline market weighs [display_order] => 0 [type] => Article ) [1] => Array ( [id] => 1031726 [label] => Irregularities found in Iranian election [display_order] => 0 [type] => Article ) [0] => Array ( [id] => 1031721 [label] => West articulates rising anger with Iran [display_order] => 0 [type] => Article ) ) [relatedArticles] => Array ( [0] => Array ( [article_id] => 1031721 [headline] => West articulates rising anger with Iran [abstract] => Western leaders have expressed rising anger at Tehran's crackdown on protesters disputing Iranian election results and on foreign journalists covering the story. [content] =>

Western leaders have expressed rising anger at Tehran's crackdown on protesters disputing Iranian election results and on foreign journalists covering the story.
  
Following a call from Germany for a full presidential vote recount, French President Nicolas Sarkozy articulated dismay at the reaction of Iranian authorities to a crisis that has already claimed 17 lives.
  
"The attitude of the Tehran authorities in the face of the legitimate desire for truth of a large part of the Iranian population is inexcusable," Sarkozy said, highlighting the Iranian government's "pariah" status.
  
Tehran, already isolated due to ambiguous nuclear ambitions, was now "depriving its people of their most basic democratic rights", he said.
  
"Repression and violence against peaceful demonstrators must stop because there is no justification for it," he added.
  
Iranian state television reported that at least 10 people died and more than 100 were wounded in Tehran during mass demonstrations on Saturday in support of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, in addition to seven killed since the demonstrations began last week.
  
But as Iran deported or detained special correspondents for flagship media outlets the BBC and Newsweek, and Britain rejected accusations of meddling behind the scenes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a vote recount.
  
"Germany stands by the people in Iran who want to exercise their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly," Merkel said of the reaction to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being declared the winner of June 12 polls.
  
The massive street protests -- which have spread abroad but subsided in Tehran Sunday amid heavy patrols by security forces -- have posed the greatest challenge to the Islamic region since the 1979 revolution.
  
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned the death toll "will raise the level of concern among Iranians and around the world."
  
A new analysis of voting figures by independent British think tank Chatham House found "irregularities" in the turnout and "highly implausible" swings to Ahmadinejad.
  
US President Barack Obama had already toughened his stance, calling on Iranian authorities to stop "violent and unjust actions against its own people."
  
But Democrats on Sunday urged Obama to keep US "fingerprints" off unfolding events amid Republican pressure for bolder US action.
  
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the "incredible acts of courage" by demonstrators, Iran's electoral watchdog expressed a readiness to "randomly" recount up to 10 percent of ballot boxes.
  
Mousavi wants a new election, but Ahmadinejad bluntly told the United States and Britain to "stop interfering" after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accused London of plotting to sabotage the election.
  
Miliband rejected the accusations, but Iran ordered the BBC's correspondent in Tehran to leave the country within 24 hours, while a Canadian journalikst working for Newsweek was detained.
  
Italy, which is preparing to host a Group of Eight summit next month, also expressed concern. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called on Iran to "check the will expressed by the people" in a statement published by his office.
  
Frattini said Rome "respects Iran, its sovereignty and recognises its important role in the region," referring to the Afghanistan conflict.
  
Later Sunday, Spain too underlined its solidarity with European partners.
  
And as European embassies in Tehran addressed concerted email calls for them to offer refuge to protesters, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout said all 27 EU 'charge d'affaires' diplomats had been summoned in Tehran.
  
However, Venezuela's leftist leader Hugo Chavez rushed to Iran's defence, urging nations to respect Ahmadinejad's "triumph".
  
"We call on the world to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution," Chavez said in his weekly radio and television address.
  
"Ahmadinejad's triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad's triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed," Chavez said.
 

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 22 June 2009 [articletime] => 22 June 2009 [display_order] => 0 ) [1] => Array ( [article_id] => 1031726 [headline] => Irregularities found in Iranian election [abstract] => Figures from Iran's disputed presidential election show "irregularities" in the turnout and "highly implausible" swings to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to an analysis published in the UK. [content] =>

Figures from Iran's disputed presidential election show "irregularities" in the turnout and "highly implausible" swings to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to an analysis published in the UK.
  
There would have to have been a radical shift in rural voting patterns and a "highly unlikely" change in heart among former reformist voters for Ahmadinejad to win as he did, said independent British think tank Chatham House.
  
Their analysis of interior ministry figures found that overall, there was a 50.9 percent swing to the president.
  
The results also suggested he had won the support of 47.5 percent of those who had backed reformist candidates in the 2005 election.
  
"This, more than any other result, is highly implausible and has been the subject of much debate in Iran," the study said.
  
It also revealeds that in two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, the turnout was more than 100 percent -- a trend it said was "problematic", although admittedly not unprecedented in Iranian elections.
  
Ahmadinejad was re-elected in the June 12 poll but his main challenger, former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi has complained of irregularities.
  
Tens of thousands of his supporters have taken to the streets demanding a recount, sparking a crackdown by the authorities.
  
This new analysis of the results was edited by Professor Ali Ansari, director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.
  
It challenges the suggestion that Ahmadinejad's victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent conservative majority.
  
Chatham House says that in 1997, 2001 and 2005, "conservative candidates and Ahmadinejad in particular were markedly unpopular in rural areas".
  
But the results this year showed the president had done remarkably well in the countryside.
  
"This increase in support for Ahmadinejad amongst rural and ethnic minority voters is out of step with previous trends, extremely large in scale and central to the question of why (or indeed whether) he won in June 2009," it said.
  
The president received about 13 million more votes in this year's election than the combined conservative vote in 2005, according to official data.
  
To reach the totals recorded by the Iranian authorities in 10 of the 30 provinces, Ahmadinejad would have had to have won over all new voters, all former centrist voters and up to 44 percent of former reformist voters.
  
Many of these provinces are where reformist candidate Mehdi Karroubi did well in 2005, and suggest his supporters this year decided not to back the main reformist challenger, Mousavi, but hardline conservative Ahmadinejad instead.
  
"To many reformists, this situation is extremely unlikely," the report said, noting that Karroubi is "of polar opposite views to Ahmadinejad on issues of political and cultural freedoms, economic management and foreign policy."
  
Karroubi had commanded strong support in rural areas in 2005, yet his vote collapsed entirely this year, even in his home province of Lorestan where his share of the vote went from 55.5 percent in 2005 to just 4.6 percent in 2009.
  
Ahmadinejad's supporters claim that Karroubi and Ahmadinejad have a similar appeal as "men of the people" which explains the trend, Chatham House noted.

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 22 June 2009 [articletime] => 22 June 2009 [display_order] => 0 ) [2] => Array ( [article_id] => 1032736 [headline] => Obama toughens his talk on Iran [abstract] => US President Barack Obama has strongly condemned the "unjust actions" of Iran in clamping down on election protests.
[content] =>

President Barack Obama staked out his toughest stance yet on Iran, expressing outrage over a government crackdown and a "heartbreaking" video of a woman bleeding to death during a street protest.

Obama, speaking at a White House news conference, also for the first time appeared to suggest that his strategy of offering negotiations with longtime US foe Iran may depend on the end-game of the crisis.

"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days," Obama said, stiffening his rhetoric on the crisis.

"I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost."

Obama came to power in January offering dialogue with US foes, including Iran, which the previous Bush administration largely refused to engage.

"We're still waiting to see how it plays itself out," Obama said of the current crisis.

"My position coming into this office has been that the United States has core national security interests in making sure that Iran doesn't possess a nuclear weapon and it stops exporting terrorism outside of its borders.

"What we've been seeing over the last several days, the last couple of weeks, obviously is not encouraging, in terms of the path that this regime may choose to take."

Obama insisted he was not interfering in Iranian affairs, as alleged by the Tehran government, but said he had to "bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people."

He was asked specifically about graphic footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, a bystander apparently shot in the chest who died on the street, which has shot around the Internet as a symbol of the post-election uprising.

"It's heartbreaking, and I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about that.

"I think that when a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car, that's a problem."

Some Republicans, including Obama's 2008 election rival John McCain, have accused the president of being timid and too slow to embrace the protests sparked by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed win over Mir Hossein Mousavi.

But he hit back: "Only I'm the president of the United States... in the hothouse of Washington, there may be all kinds of stuff going back and forth in terms of Republican critics versus the administration.

"That's not what is relevant to the Iranian people," Obama said.

Obama has pursued a carefully calibrated position towards Iran, balancing sympathy for protestors with a desire not to be seen "meddling" in the affairs of an arch-foe that Washington suspects of developing nuclear weapons.

Explaining his reluctance to delve into Tehran's internal politics, Obama also complained that some of his circumspect words had already been willfully misinterpreted in Iran.

"They've got some of the comments that I've made being mistranslated in Iran, suggesting that I'm telling rioters to go out and riot some more.

"There are reports suggesting that the CIA is behind all this -- all of which is patently false but it gives you a sense of the narrative that the Iranian government would love to play into."

With pundits predicting Obama's political honeymoon will soon be over, leaving only a tough slog to enact key reforms like healthcare and financial regulation, the president sought a swift jolt of momentum from the news conference.

He predicted US unemployment would likely climb above 10 percent, as the country battles its worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, but said a new economic stimulus package was "not yet" needed.

The president also offered his full support for legislation on climate change which the US Congress is prepared to put to a vote.

And he said that if lawmakers did not embrace his call for sweeping health reform, including a government component, every American would soon end up with worse health coverage.

Tuesday's event was Obama's fourth solo White House news conference since taking office in January and his first such event since the end of April, when he went before the cameras to mark his symbolic first 100 days in office.

 

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 24 June 2009 [articletime] => 24 June 2009 [display_order] => 0 ) ) [comments] => Array ( ) ) [winston] => test )