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Out Of Gas
Did you hear the one about the oil-rich nation where petrol was rationed? Yes, it's a case of water, water everywhere for the long-suffering people of Iran, where it has been announced that petrol rationing will begin in two weeks.
Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil exporter - but has had to import petrol to match domestic demand.
The news, the Guardian reports, looks set to provoke a backlash against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One of his election promises, the newspaper reports, was to bring "oil wealth to the people's tables."
Instead, drivers in the country where oil has traditionally been very cheap will be rationed three litres a day. Up until Tuesday, a litre of petrol cost around a penny. There was an outcry when the price went up to five pence a litre. Drivers who want to go above the three litre limit will pay twenty pence per litre.
As for that oil wealth, well, inflation in Iran is estimated at around 20-30 percent.
There are fears that fuel subsidies have produced a large budget deficit - and that Iran's export capability (which is funding its nuclear programme, among other things) - could run out in fifteen years.
"Despite producing 4.2m barrels of crude per day, lack of refinement capacity and rising demand forced Iran to spend more than £2bn on imported petrol last year," the Guardian adds. It also quoted a Tehran analyst, who said that Iran was one of the "top three per capita users of energy in the world" and this was unsustainable for a nation whose wealth depends on fuel exports.
