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Gasoline Sanctions on Iran: How Will Tehran Respond?

[IranTracker-American Enterprise Institute] Brianna Rosen, Charlie Szrom, and Maseh Zarif - As of June 2009, Iran consumed 408,385 barrels of gasoline per day. Iran currently imports 120-128,000 barrels per day. As of Sep. 2009, China exported 30-40,000 barrels per day to Iran. On Sep. 6, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela would provide 20,000 gasoline barrels per day to Iran. Although the Dutch-Swiss firm Vitol may have decreased its involvement in the Iranian gasoline market since 2007, it and India's Reliance, along with France's Total, the UK-Netherlands' Royal Shell, Switzerland's Glencore, Switzerland's Trafigura, and Malaysia's Petronas remain some of the foremost foreign players in the Iranian market. Sanctions would most directly affect Reliance and the European firms, resulting in a potential deficit of roughly 88,000 barrels - the non-Chinese-originated portion - of Iran's daily imports. Domestic backlash against a 2007 rationing plan made Iranian officials wary of further action, as protestors set fire to gas stations and attacked state-run banks and business centers. Proposed increases in gasoline rationing and prices could generate internal protests on a larger scale, setting fire to an already tense political atmosphere.
2009-10-07 08:00:00
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