[Cid_Yama]

Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Wednesday that Iran's Oil Bourse is to start operation from next Sunday. Iran's national currency, rial will be the base of hard currencies for all transactions in Tehran Oil Bourse, he said.

http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-2 ... 165148.htm

[billg]

Does next Sunday mean Feb 17 or Feb 24?

[Cid_Yama]

17th. Note: Transactions will be conducted in the Iranian Rial. Dollar will take another hit.

[eXpat]

This should stir things up a bit...

[BigTex]

Wasn't Saddam Hussein the last OPEC member head of state to try something like this?

[Bas]

So this means we'll have an oil price on sunday. I think.

[Concerned]

Should be time soon for

1. Bringing some democracy to Iran.

2. Destroying their "nuclear program" (which might include the odd stray missile into say the new oil bourse)

[ohanian]

On Feb 18th the undersea fibre optic cables in the middle east will be ....

[dinopello]

Are they actually going to do it this time?

Iran to open bourse in 2005

The Tehran oil bourse is scheduled to open in 2005, according to its architect, Mohammad Javad Asemipour, who is a personal adviser to the Iranian energy minister.

Iran to open bourse in 2006

The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate “nuclear” weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire. That weapon is the Iranian Oil Bourse slated to open in March 2006. It will be based on a euro-oil-trading mechanism that naturally implies payment for oil in Euro.

[PopeGideon]

I don't know. Previous predictions always seemed off in the future. This one is a week or two.

Seems like they might be close.

[roccman]

wrong thread

[Micki]

Seems strange that they are trading only in Rial.
I thought the main advantage was that holders of Euro and Yen could do oil transactions withouth involving F/X transactions.

Is the strategy perhaps to go live on a small non-threatening manner and then expand later on???

[Euric]

http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-2 ... 165148.htm
Oil minister: Oil Bourse to start operation next week Tehran, 13 Feb, IRNA

Iran-Oil-Minister: Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Wednesday that Iran's Oil Bourse is to start operation from next Sunday. Speaking to reporters after a cabinet session, he said Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Davoud Danesh Jaafari is to attend the opening ceremony.

Iran's national currency, rial will be the base of hard currencies for all transactions in Tehran Oil Bourse, he said. The country's oil revenue is to hit dlrs 63 billion this year, said the minister.

On construction of Peace Pipeline between Iran, Pakistan and India, he said China can join the project if it desires so. "Iran and India are now working on the plan and involvement of China does not mean that India has to be excluded from the project," he said.

On invitation extended by Turkey to India for cooperation in 'Valve Oil' in Central Asia and impacts on such cooperation on Iran-India joint cooperation in Peace Pipeline, he said these are some assumptions which are not true.

The Oil Ministry is to drill ten oil wells which is expected to raise the volume of gas production by another 20 to 25 million cubic metric next year, he said. On formation of a gas cartel like OPEC, he said the plan is very time consuming and requires collective cooperation among gas producing countries.

More articles: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0802/S00110.htm

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne ... __oil_.htm

http://mathaba.net/news/?x=580907

"All preparations have been made to launch the bourse; it will open during the Ten-Day Dawn (the ceremonies marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran)," Iran's Finance Minister said. However other reports indicate further delays to this already overdue project, with it possibly opening on February 19th. The Minister earlier stated that the Oil Bourse is located on the Persian Gulf island of Kish.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... a&aid=7998

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5977

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/06/1431206

[I_Like_Plants]

There was a hugely popular book called "The Japan That Can Say No" that was published in the late 80s. Shortly after that, the Japanese economy went el plunko. They've been struggling in what appears to be a permenent slump ever since.

But yes, they are becoming less subservient to the US lately, more protests of US bases, standing up for their Yasukuni Shrine, etc.

I say, horray for them! WWII is over.

[I_Like_Plants]

BTW the Pacific War against Japan was won by choking off their oil supplies. They had to ship it all in.

How does this parallel with defeating the US Empire? If the petro-dollar can be rendered a historical curiosity, and gradually the US's tentacles can be loosened, gradually countries can wiggle loose and start selling oil and buying oil on their own terms. The US's behavior has been so bad that in economically neutral cases, the choice will be to not deal with the US.

This means the US has to depend more on its own oil supplies, and *shudder* economize.

Can you imagine US'ians actually giving up the his and hers SUVs? Moving nearer to the bus line, or petitioning for bus lines to be expanded? Walking? Biking?

Thus, I can imagine anything, including the sneaky and imaginative (within the limited scope of the us leaderships' imagination) to be done to prevent the Bourse from opening.

[Cid_Yama]

There's a lot of stuff that will be happening this Sunday, just in time for President's Day.

[billg]

According this article, the bourse opens on Feb. 27.

Iran to launch oil and gas exchange on Feb. 27
19:01 | 13/ 02/ 2008

TEHRAN, February 13 (RIA Novosti) - Iran will launch a commodities exchange for oil, petrochemicals and natural gas on February 27, the Islamic Republic's oil minister said on Wednesday.

Gholam-Hossein Nozari told Iran's Press TV satellite channel the opening ceremony of the Oil Bourse would be attended by Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Davoud Danesh Jaafari, who will head the bourse.

He said earlier the Oil Bourse will be located on the Persian Gulf island of Kish and that all financial settlements will be made in Iran's national currency, the rial.

The minister said his country's oil revenue will reach $63 billion by the end of this Iranian year, which ends on March 20.

He said oil sales reached $55 billion in the first 11 months of the year, and that "if crude prices stand at the current level, next year's oil revenues will be the same as this year."

Nozari announced last week that Iran's crude oil production had reached 4.184 million barrels per day, the highest level since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

News link

[Kingcoal]

Seems strange that they are trading only in Rial.
I thought the main advantage was that holders of Euro and Yen could do oil transactions withouth involving F/X transactions.

Is the strategy perhaps to go live on a small non-threatening manner and then expand later on???

A bourse is about generating a spot price, which has to be priced in one currency. After that, the price calculations are made based on the exchange rate with that currency. In order to make oil affordable, you have to make sure you have a favorable exchange rate with the spot price currency. That leads to acquiring reserves of the spot price currency and basing your monetary creation on it. The demand created by this accumulation supports the spot price currency, which must be inflated steadily to keep pace with the demand. In order to support the demand for the currency, the issuing country must open it’s trade borders and buy products and services from the rest of the world like crazy in order to effectively export enough of it’s currency to satisfy demand. That's dollar hegemony. Iran is hoping for rial hegemony. In our modern economy, oil is gold and whatever currency is linked to it becomes golden. The problem I see is that very few people understand the complete commitment towards supporting the currency hegemony. It requires a mostly import based economy where the main export is, well, currency. Iran will have to open its trade with the rest of the world and buy like crazy so other countries are able to accumulate rials.

Generating simultaneous multiple spot prices based on multiple currencies would be something new, but I think that would lead to accusations of manipulation because it amounts to unilaterally determining exchange rates.

[Cid_Yama]

This from last week:

"there is a substantial event that has effectively been killed by the loss of connectivity: the launch of the Iranian Oil Bourse.

"A marketplace for oil, gas, and various petrochemicals, the Iranian Oil Bourse would trade exclusively in non-dollars and probably substantial negative impact to the U.S. economy and financial system.

The bourse was scheduled for launch this week (between Feb. 1 and 11.

With complete elimination of Internet connectivity to the country, this launch is now impossible and unlikely to be achievable before month's end (given the estimate 10-14 days for repairs to fiber-optic cables)."

In most instances Internet connectivity can be rerouted, and much of the Middle East has already done this. But what makes this situation unique is that the bourse was being established on Kish Island, a free-trade zone set up by the Iranians in hopes of creating a cool tourist destination.

There doesn't seem to be an alternate Internet connection to the island other than the cut cables.

marketwatch

scoop

business-standard


Cables have been repaired and Iran announces Oil Bourse to open this coming Sunday.

Traffic has returned to normal on undersea Internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf that were cut last month, causing disruptions across the Middle East and parts of Asia, cable owner FLAG Telecom said Monday.

Repair ships completed work over the weekend on both the FALCON cable in the Persian Gulf 35 miles north of Dubai and the FLAG Europe-Asia cable about 5 miles north off the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, U.K.-based FLAG said in a statement on its Web site.

thestate
[edit - reformatted urls - markl]