Gulf oil blockade would not last long — envoys

Press, 24 September 1980, Page 8

Gulf oil blockade would not last long — envoys

NZPA London ' Gulf diplomats in London have said that any attempt to blockade the Gulf could not be expected to last long, although Iran has in the past threatened such a move. Iran threatened a blockade again yesterday, as fighting between it and Iraq intensified. Tliey felt sure it would invite Arab intervention, if not a move by the powerful United States naval task force operating close to the area. The Straits of Hormuz

are the way out to world markets for almost all the oil of main Middle East producers, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Iran. , About 18 million barrels per day, half the nonCommunist world’s oil iniports, pass through the Straits of Hormuz, now threatened with disruption in the fighting between Iramand Iraq. Japan gets 75 per cent of its oil from the Gulf while over 25 per cent of Western Europe’s oil

flows titrough the straits and about 15 per cent of United States oil comes from the area. Pipelines to the Mediter- . ranean exist, but one from Saudi Arabia could carry only a fraction of the kingdom’s 9.5 million barrels per day. It reaches the sea at Sidon in southern Lebanon. Western . oil-industry sources said the other two pipelines from Iraq to Syria and Turkey can cany qnly 800,000 barrels per day of Iraqi exports, which usually total 2.8 million barrels per day.