Iran’s Missile Tests and How They Affect Oklahoma Energy Producers







The issue of the move by the Obama administration to drop economic sanctions against Iran and allow the country to export more oil, affecting Oklahoma energy producers rose again this week when Iran test fired two ballistic missiles.

“This did not surprise me,” said Sen. James Lankford in an interview with OK Energy Today. He also found it yet another occasion to being critical of President Obama for reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran that resulted in hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day released onto the global market.

The phrase “Israel must be wiped out” was written in Hebrew on each according to Iranian media. But the Iranian officials maintained the tests did not violate the accord reached last year with the Obama Administration and the U.N. Security council. The nuclear deal with the White House was reached in 2015 while the U.N. Security Council lifted most of its sanctions against Tehran on Jan 16. A ban imposed in 2010 on Iran testing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads was also lifted, but Iran said this week the two missiles were not capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Senator Lankford, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee thinks the tests did violate the accord in principle, all the while, Iran is pumping more oil into the world market, resulting in low oil prices.

“It does clearly violate the U.N. sanctions in the past and the American people don’t buy it,” said the senator. “There is no trust for leaders of Iran. I’m still compleely confounded why the President worked so hard to do this.”

Lankford is working on a bill in the Senate to undo some of the agreement once President Obama is out of office. He noted that one of the sanctions lifted by the President was an insurance requirement and restriction on oil. It allowed Iran to begin producing huge amounts of oil and parking it in large oil ships around the world, ready to release it once the oil sanctions were officially lifted.

“They’re capable of producing 500,000 barrels a day onto the world market and soon it’ll be up to one million a day,” added Lankford. “The President made a bad situation even worse.”

Listen to Jerry Bohnen’s interview of Sen. Lankford.


Click here for audio