Obama to Stop Iran’s Gas Boycott

Over the past year, the U.S Senate has made efforts to impose gasoline-based economic sanctions on Iran. Today, Obama ordered an end to the gasoline embargo on Iran.

Iranian newspaper KhabarAnlayn reported that, according to a Reuter’s news agency announcement Monday, the disagreement between the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate was the cause of the retreat of the bill. However, some experts point to Iran’s capability of providing domestic gas as the main reason for stopping the decision to place sanctions on Iran. The issue that concerns America is that they are convinced that the boycott will only lead Iran to achieve higher self-sufficiency, instead of pressuring Iran to comply (with the West), as was the intended effect.

The ban on exporting gas to Iran was approved last spring, when Republican Sen. John Kyl of Arizona, on behalf 25 American Senators (the chamber has a hundred and one representatives), stated at the beginning of the process that, to impose sanctions, companies exporting gasoline to Iran have two paths to choose from—Iran’s economy, worth $250 billion, or America’s economy, worth $13 trillion dollars, with the right choice reserved for them.

Of course, it was said that President Barack Obama was against Iranian fuel sanctions from the beginning, but he accompanied the proposal due to pressure from the Senate and the House of Representatives. The sanctions include forbidding both the purchase of crude oil from Iran and the sale of processed gasoline/petroleum products to Iran by the United States. The Senate plan, costing the U.S. $34 billion in U.S. energy and water supplies, was approved. It’s interesting that the initial plan to place sanctions on Iran’s gasoline by the Senate last spring was approved by delegates from all three political parties at the same time—Democrat, Republican and Independent. Republican Sen. John Kyl of Arizona and Independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Conneticut, the authors of this bill, announced in a joint statement that restricting access to essential energy resources can be used to help U.S. diplomatic efforts persuade Iran’s government to compromise on its peaceful nuclear activities. In fact, the American plan for sanctions on Iran’s fuel was intended to act as a tool to stop the activities of Iran’s nuclear program, because they know fuel is the Achilles’ heel of Iran’s economy.

While this was going on, here in Iran, Ghanimi Fard, vice president of Investments of the National Iranian Oil Company, stressed in an interview on Monday that the global fuel market is not limited in its number of vendors, and therefore there would be no problem providing enough of a product supply for the needs of the country.

According to Fard, any refinery in the world producing petroleum products and not selling in an international market does not decrease their investment value.

He said that providing gasoline in the international arena for any country is easy, and the amount of product entering our country, in comparison to the international exchange, is not of significant difference.

So far, many of the countries in line with the policy of America have dramatically reduced the overall sale of gasoline to Iran. However, countries like China have provided gas to Iran over the past months. In addition, the independent efforts of Iran to attempt production of gas from (unrefined) petrochemicals provide another option for Iranian fuel needs to be met.

Based on statistics, Iran consumes approximately about 21 million liters of gas daily, and although some companies have refused to sell fuel products to the country, the limiting of the gasoline supply has not been a serious problem thus far. This is mainly due to the importing of gasoline by Rylayns company, French company Total, the Swiss companies Glnkvr and Vytvl*, and British companies such as British Petroleum, with insurance company Lloyds of London providing insurance on all cargo loads of gasoline exported to Iran.

*Editor’s note: Names of companies could not be verified.