re: #355 freetoken

Nope. That is the same argument that some say (wrongly) about US coal.

The counter argument is very simple, and can be illustrated with beer:

If you have 100 bottles of beer on the wall, and you take one down and pass it around, how many do you have left on the wall?

99.

If you have 100 bottles of beer on the wall, and you take two down and pass them around, how many do you have left on the wall?

A: 42? 69? 98? 99? 100? Bazillion?

re: #360 Bagua

Natural Gas is not coal. The US is not Iran. They have no need for nuclear capacity and they most certainly do have vast amounts of natural gas.

You keep missing the point. This article has too many is too big to encapsulate in a quote, but here’s one anyway:

atimes.com
In fact, the oil and gas that Iran has are almost as expensive as the oil and gas that other countries don’t have. To be able to use oil or gas as a feed for an industry (eg power generation), Iran has to develop the resources. Now, once developed and produced, from an economic point of view, oil can be treated as a commodity, which has a value. The monetization of gas is more difficult, but not if you have ready markets around you and also if you can use that gas to boost your oil production capacity. In fact, considering the reality that the majority of Iran’s oil and gas reserves are in the south and the country’s population centers are in the north, it makes more sense to export the oil and gas in the south (oil from the terminals and gas through pipelines and gas value-add projects) rather than pump it to the north and translate it into electric power.

One example explains the logic of this argument - no one has so far posed the question why Iran actually buys oil from Caspian sources. The simple answer is that it makes economic sense: Caspian crude is closer to Iran’s northern refineries and the utilization of Caspian crude in the north frees up oil in the south for export. The only argument that can be used regarding Iran’s oil and gas reserves compared to other countries is the fact that Iran has secure domestic supplies as compared to other countries that are importers of oil and gas. However, if Iran as a country manages also to secure its own indigenous supply of nuclear fuel, then the equation changes and it becomes more of an economic evaluation.

I should preemptively point out that, just because it makes economic sense for Iran to use nuclear energy, that obviously doesn’t mean that these are the intentions of the Iranian regime’s nuclear program.