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U.S. Puts Squeeze on Iran's Oil Fields

[Los Angeles Times] Kim Murphy - Washington is quietly gaining ground against the oil fields that are Iran's lifeblood. Iran's oil industry has raked in record amounts of cash during three years of high oil prices. But a new U.S. campaign to dry up financing for oil and natural gas development poses a threat to the republic's ability to continue exporting oil over the next two decades, many analysts say. "If the projects for increasing the capacity and production of the oil wells will not happen, within ten years, there will not be any oil for export," said Mohammed Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian, Iran's deputy oil minister for international affairs, in an interview. Efforts by the U.S. and its allies over the last few months to persuade international banks and oil companies to pull out of Iran threaten dozens of projects. "Many European banks which had accepted financing some oil industries projects have recently canceled them," Nejad-Hosseinian said. Nations such as Japan have begun to back out of Iran oil development under U.S. pressure.
2007-01-08 01:00:00
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