Manama: $100 constitutes a reasonable price for a barrel of crude oil, Bahrain's energy minister has said.
Abdul Hussain Mirza told Kuwait News Agency (Kuna) that the price was reasonable "because states planning investments in energy today face high costs after times of easy drilling have gone."
The minister ruled out that Iran would implement its threat to block the strategic Hormuz strait, arguing that "such a drastic measure would be harmful to all the parties and any country that threatens to close the Hormuz strait is actually threatening itself."
The minister said that the closure of the passageway would not last for a long time because nations of the globe could not tolerate 40 percent of shortage of oil supplies.
In the past times, the prices were linked to basic factors, such as supply and demand, but nowadays, politics have become the dominant influential factor, Mirza told Kuna.
Iranian threats to close Hormuz and Israeli warnings of possible attack on Iran have contributed in pushing the prices high.
The prices now should not go up, but they are being affected by geopolitical events, he said on the sidelines of the International Energy Forum held in Kuwait.
Bahrain's oil output is 195,000 barrels per day, including 45,000 barrels from Bahrain field and 300,000 bpd from Abu Safah field, shared with Saudi Arabia, the minister said.
Bahrain's share of the crude from Abu Safah, 150,000 bpd, is exported, and the 45,000 barrels extracted from Bahrain field are sent to the national refinery. However, the country buys from Saudi Arabia every day, 230,000 barrels via a pipeline, erected in 1945.
This amount is also shifted to the refinery for production of derivatives for exportation, except for 10 percent that are consumed locally, the minister said.
