Iran's energy sector review

Iran Khodro and Saipa have respectively raised the price of their products by 10 per cent and 18-20 per cent on average. According to the Mehr News Agency, the organisation for supporting consumers and producers has issued permission to increase the prices of Iran Khodro and Saipa products. Based on this permission, Iran Khodro and Saipa are allowed respectively to raise the aforementioned prices. On August 28, the vice chairman of the Majlis industry committee, Aziz Akbarian, told Mehr that the two car manufacturers were laying off their workforce due to heavy debts to hundreds of parts-making companies. According to him, the Money and Credit Council is planning to pay each of the two companies five trillion rials (some 400 million) in loans in order to prevent from sacking two million labourers. The price of products of the two Iranian giant carmakers grew to the extent that the Peugeot 207i, for example, was sold at 380 million rials (around $31,000) in Tehran on Septe...

The collapse of Iran's national currency in value has been caused by the Iranian government's mismanagement of the economy, U.S. Secretary Department's Persian language spokesperson Alan Eyre told  Trend  in an interview on Oct.6. The USD rate in Iran suddenly increased from late September by 80 per cent compared to Iran's national currency the rial in the country's open market. This collapse in the rial's value caused the closure of the Forex exchanges, markets and people are protesting in Tehran. Adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Gholamhossein Haddad Adel referred to the collapse as a 'conspiracy of enemies', saying Iran will defeat it strongly on Friday. After protests and demonstrations against the falling rial value, police clashed them and arrested dozens of currency speculators spoken of as 'market disrupters' on Wednesday. A day before the protests, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during ...

It seems that Iran's economic problems are going to be widened day to day. After falling the country's oil export by more than 50 percent, increasing USD rate from 13, 000 rials in the beginning of current year to 3620 rials on Oct.3, the obstacles occurred in transaction of exported oil and non-oil commodities' revenues into country. Now Hadi Ghavami, parliamentary Plan and Budget Committee member says that Iran imported much more than a half of its annual wheat from abroad. Wheat issue is very sensitive for Iran with 75.2 million people. Fars News Agency quoted Ghavami on Oct.2, saying that Iran imported 7 million tons of its 12 million annual wheat demands during last 6 months (Iranian solar year begins in March 20). Iran had reached self-confidence in wheat sphere several years ago. Iranian media outlets reported in June, which is the harvesting period of wheat in Iran, that farmers prefer to sell their harvested wheat to the private sector that pays more fo...

The amount of liquidity in Iran has been announced officially at four thousand trillion rials. On Monday morning each American dollar sold at 29,700 rials and then reached 35, 500 rials in the evening, indicating a 16.5 per cent drop in the national currency's value versus the USD. Regarding the amount of liquidity, namely citizens' cash assets in the country, Iranians lost 660 trillion rials between the morning and evening on Oct.1. The Forex price fluctuation in Iran last occurred more than three decades ago after the Islamic Revolution occurred in 1979. Since then, the inflation rate in Iran has usually been above 10 per cent and Iran's rial value has decreased year-on-year versus the USD. However, slowly. Iranian government during the past 33 years has kept the rial value artificially up by injecting billions of dollars from exported oil crude revenues to the country's economic vessels, but during last 18 months rial value drop has accelerated. A USD in ...

Although the Iranian authorities have several times rejected the idea that oil exports have dropped, Vice Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Reza Bahonar have finally announced that oil exports have dropped to around 1 million barrels per day (bpd) during first half of solar year (started on March 19) averagely, while this figure for June and July has fallen to around 800,000 barrels per day. Earlier, US Treasury Department announced that Iran is losing monthly $5 billion in oil revenues due to western sanctions and restrictions over its oil export and banking system. Iran's oil export during last year was 2.3 million barrels per day and according to OPEC statistics it gained about $110 billion in 2011 from oil crude export. Bahonar said that Iran's budget bill for current solar year was approved at $5, 660 trillion rials (about $449 billion), but only 1000 trillion rials of that has been realized during six months of current solar year. This means, about 20 percent of ...

The 35-nation board of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has imposed a new resolution on Iran last day, demanding that the country allow the agency's inspectors to visit the disputed military base Parchin, which has been suspected on conducted nuclear-related test and to make full cooperation with IAEA. With regarding the fact that among 35 Governor Board members only Cuba voted against, this is quiet hard signal for isolated Iran to budge. About a half of Governor Board members are also have member or observer status in Non-Aligned Movement whit Iran's presidency, including Chile, China, India, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, United Arabic Emirate, Ecuador, Brazil, Egypt, Tunisia, Singapore, Jordan, South Africa, Tanzania and Niger. Tehran who hosted 16-th NAM summit with participation of about 10,000 guests in late August, has repeatedly announced about its "diplomatic victory" to form strong allies who supported Iran's nuclear activities. This is IAEA's 12th r...

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said on Monday that Iran is talking with Egypt to export oil. The two countries had severed relations since 1979 because Egypt's late President Anwar Sadat received Iranian exiled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who fled Iran following the revolution and also because of the signed Israel-Egypt peace agreement during Sadat's presidency. Qasemi's statement came a week after his Egyptian counterpart Osama Kamal told the state owned Al-Ahram newspaper that Cairo had "no objection" to importing Iranian crude and processing it in Egyptian refineries. Iran's oil export has been disrupted by the latest European sanctions that led to a cut in Iranian crude import by 27 Union members and insurance cover for the tankers which carry Iranian oil was also stopped. About 40 days ago, Reuters reported that Iran has delivered about seven million barrels of crude at the Egyptian port of Sidi Kerir to some unknown people calling themselves E...