U.S. Senate Votes to Squeeze Iran by Targeting Its Gasoline Imports

WOW

A day after President Obama warned that Iran faced “growing consequences” over its nuclear activities, the U.S. Senate late Thursday offered him a tool to make good on that pledge – but it’s a tool for which the administration has shown little enthusiasm.

By voice vote, the Senate passed a bill paving the way for sanctions targeting Iranian petroleum imports. The House of Representatives passed a similar bill six weeks ago.

Targeting gasoline imports would hit the regime in a weak spot. Despite massive oil reserves, Iran imports about 40 percent of its domestic gasoline needs because of poor refinery infrastructure.

Now I see this as one might consider when picking up a handful of sand. The tighter you hold it, the more that slips out.

If we put sanctions on them, what would you consider their course of action to be? Thinking logically of course.

Why, they will just go elsewhere for their gasoline.

So, in my opinion of course, we just drive them further away and cause them to work even more closely with the Chinese and Russians whom I guess they would turn to for any resources we may deny them.

Sanctions are not always the way to go, but it seems to be the knee jerk reaction to any global decision anymore.

Semper

What does this do to our oil/gas prices I wonder. The first thing I can see is OPEC thinking this is a good reason to raise prices.

reply to post by ventian


I never even thought of that angle



They never really need much of a reason to raise the price of oil, this is a good one..

Semper

reply to post by semperfortis


Important thing to note here is the sanctions are only targeting imports and not exports. That means sanction against internal use for inside Iran. As there is no source for the article I am assuming there are no sanctions against exports.

This would mean there will be no price changes in U.S. or elsewhere unless Iran itself restricts gasoline exports.

Secondly, Iran may not be 'much' bothered about Gasoline imports since they have started gas pipelines trades. I have covered that in detail in a thread here

or in short

Within the space of three weeks, Turkmenistan has committed its entire gas exports to China, Russia and Iran. It has no urgent need of the pipelines that the United States and the European Union have been advancing. Are we hearing the faint notes of a Russia-China-Iran symphony?

The 182-kilometer Turkmen-Iranian pipeline starts modestly with the pumping of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of Turkmen gas. But its annual capacity is 20bcm, and that would meet the energy requirements of Iran's Caspian region and enable Tehran to free its own gas production in the southern fields for export. The mutual interest is perfect: Ashgabat gets an assured market next door; northern Iran can consume without fear of winter shortages; Tehran can generate more surplus for exports; Turkmenistan can seek transportation routes to the world market via Iran; and Iran can aspire to take advantage of its excellent geographical location as a hub for the Turkmen exports.

We are witnessing a new pattern of energy cooperation at the regional level that dispenses with Big Oil. Russia traditionally takes the lead. China and Iran follow the example. Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan hold respectively the world's largest, second-largest and fourth-largest gas reserves. And China will be consumer par excellence in this century. The matter is of profound consequence to the US global strategy.

[edit on 31-1-2010 by December_Rain]