Study: Oil decline threatens Iran

[IDemo]

By Barry Schweid
Associated Press
Published December 26, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis published Monday in a journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran's economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable, with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year from oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 to 12 percent annually. In less than five years exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Stern predicted.

For two decades, the United States has deployed military forces in the region in a strategy to pre-empt emergence of a regional superpower.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0612260029dec26,1,675986.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

[NickB79]

1. So in summary, Iran is passing the peak of oil production

Iran's domestic consumption of oil, combined with declining oil production, means it might soon be unable to export oil at all. Gee, that's great.

[Massacure]

2. They just signed a 128 billion dollar contract with China too.

If I recall is spread over 25 years and is something along the lines of 150,000 barrels of oil per day and 10 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas per year. I recall Iran needs foreign technology to keep its oil wells operating because they are getting old, and the U.S. isn't going to help them at all. China may soon be Iran's sole buyer of energy.