Iran's energy sector review

Iran and Oman eventually on May 26 agreed to demarcate the stretch of their maritime borders. Excluding the tension between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over three islands in the Persian Gulf, namely Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, Iran’s maritime borders across the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman are absolutely defined. Iran and Saudi Arabia have already settled their maritime borders in the late 70s. Iran has no dispute with other Arab nations over maritime borders. Iran and Oman share 450 kilometers of maritime borders. Aside from the issue of shipping and the possibility of emerging land disputes in the upcoming years, the issue of owning seep sea energy resources is of high importance for the two countries, particularly taking into account that Iran and Oman have joint borders both in the Persian Gulf and in the Gulf of Oman. A map of Iran’s oil and gas fields, published by the Iranian Oil Ministry, shows that the two countries share just an oil-gas field...

Iran stopped allocating 60 liters of gasoline a month for private cars, saying that gasoline was eliminated entirely from its subsidized energy basket. The limited subsidized gasoline price was 22 cents. There is about 2.1 billion liters of unused subsidized gasoline, while Oil Ministry warned that quota cards would expire on September 22. Currently a liter of gasoline is sold at about 30 cents, while the premium gasoline price increased by 3 cents to 36.3 cents. The gasoline price in Iran is still less than regional prices. Iran started elimination of energy subsides gradually in 2010, when the price of a liter of gasoline was ten times less than it is now. Iran has increased the energy prices since late 2010 in two steps, but with a huge devaluation in the national currency (rial) the prices are still very low. For instance a cubic meter of natural gas was sold for about 100 rials to the Iranian housing sector in 2010 while a US dollar was 10,000 rials, while currently...