World: Oil and Iran: Only the Saudis and the Canucks have more oil than Khomeniac Iran

Jonas Max Ferris, of the FOX News business team, describes Iran:

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Iran sits on an underground sea of black gold, 135 billion barrels by some estimates — perhaps 10 times what in theory could be extracted from the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) and around 12% of the world’s oil reserves. Only Saudi Arabia and Canada have more. Oil reserves are notoriously inaccurate, but these numbers are likely in the ballpark.

With oil near $70 a barrel, Iran rakes in about $150 million a day in pure profit, given the low cost of mideast oil production. That works out to roughly $50 billion a year for the Iran state-run oil industry. For a $180 billion dollar economy, that’s a big piece of the pie.

Iran is in a rare moment of strength, right up there with the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 and the hostage crisis of 1979. The global economy needs oil more than ever, and can’t lose access to the 2.5 million barrels a day Iran exports — about 5% of total oil exported from top world producers.

Last I heard, France's Chirac has mentioned use of that country's nuclear option, and was I correct to connect that thawt on his part with a related one regarding Iran? Everyone opposed to the war against terrorism has claimed that the only factor motivating the war from the Allies side, is oil. But they forget that all the oil in Islam can't buy nuclear-weapons capability. The issues vis à vis Iran are twofold now: lack of democracy (the votes controlled by the mullocracy are not democractic); and nuclear-weapons proliferatoin. I just have to check out the detail regarding Chirac! - Politicarp

UPDATE: I found it! France's Chirac on nukes. No mention of Iran - so this is a bit of a correction. - P