You can’t drive far paying $0.44 a gallon for gasoline
The BBC describes gasoline rationing in Iran and the vibrant reaction to it (”Guns, fireworks, tanks, Ahmadinejad should be killed”), previewed here a month ago:
Windows were smashed and stones thrown at the stations, and there was traffic chaos as motorists queued to buy fuel. Iranians were given only two hours’ notice of the move that limits private drivers to 100 litres of fuel a month. Despite its huge energy reserves, Iran lacks refining capacity and it imports about 40% of its petrol. The country has a large budget deficit largely caused by fuel subsidies and the inflation rate is estimated at 20-30%…
During the night, cars were set alight and petrol stations vandalised while, in the capital, a supermarket and a bank were also attacked. “Guns, fireworks, tanks, Ahmadinejad should be killed,” chanted angry youths, throwing stones at police.The protests are the first large-scale outpouring of anger against the Iranian government since Mr Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.
Iran’s petrol is heavily subsidised, sold at about a fifth of its real cost. The price of 1,000 rials ($0.11) per litre makes Iran one of the cheapest countries in the world for motorists. So far there has been no announcement about whether Iranians can buy more petrol at the real market cost. Licensed taxi drivers will be able to buy 800 litres a month at the subsidised price.
Meanwhile, Thomas Lifson explains that you can’t even get to the Teheran airport to escape this madness:
The Pakyan car, a descendant of Britain’s Hillman Hunter owned by four out of 10 Iranians, uses as much as 16 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometers, about 15 miles per gallon. The 3.3-liter-a-day ration limits the least efficient Pakyans to about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, a day. That’s not enough to get from central Tehran to the city’s new airport, 35 kilometers to the south…
Finally, Iran is on a path to becoming an importer of oil in the next decade, because of its Communist-like economic policies. However great the incentive for the people to rise up today, the pressure can only intensify over the next decade.
It is nothing short of bizarre to watch the colossal economic stupidity and self-imposed poverty and strife of post-revolution Iran, given, for example, the success of modern China during the same period. It’s the same story in Gaza and the West Bank compared to Israel, or the Koreas, etc. Yet somehow the utter needlessness of these economic hardships never seem to be reported by the MSM as a direct consequence of the systems these poor people live under.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Its certainly true that the dead stream media doesn’t make any connection between the poverty and hardship experienced by most in the Middle East is directly related to the economic idiocy of their governments. But then look at the economic idiocy being espoused by Democrats today. They want to nationalize medicine, apply price controls to gasoline, and tax everything that moves. All guaranteed to hurt America.