Iran's treasures start to be counted

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-04-091213.html



Iran's treasures start to be counted
By Chris Cook
Dec 9, '13

An extraordinary shift in geo-politics is taking place as President Hassan Rouhani's team energetically addresses the catastrophic mess they inherited in Iran from the Mahmud Ahmadinejad administration by opening Iran for business.

But perhaps the greater shift is the US realization - after spending more time with sophisticated Iranian strategists in a few days than they did in the previous 30 years - of the sheer scale of the opportunity to completely rebalance Middle Eastern energy policy through what Iran's master strategist, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has called energy diplomacy.

Many in the oil industry consider that claimed Saudi oil reserves are more apparent than real and have grave reservations that the Saudis can produce at levels much higher than the current 10 million barrels per day (bpd).

Iraq, on the other hand, shows huge promise, although while the Iraqi government makes ambitious claims of 9 million bpd, few in the industry think Iraq will produce much above 5 million bpd and then only if demand increases so that the new production does not collapse the oil price.