Head of Iran's Oil Ministry quits

Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh is believed to have rebuffed Ahmadinejad's attempts to streamline his department : By Kim Murphy, August 13, 2007

Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh stepped down Sunday, plunging the administration of the world's fourth-largest oil producing operation back into the uncertainty that has shadowed it under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Vaziri-Hamaneh, a veteran Oil Ministry employee, was confirmed to the post by parliament in December 2005 after the Iranian president unsuccessfully nominated three relatively inexperienced candidates, including a former Revolutionary Guard commander. State news agencies said the head of the National Iranian Oil Co., Gholam Hossein Nozari, would serve as acting head of the powerful ministry, which Ahmadinejad has pledged to cleanse of "mafia" elements. Vaziri-Hamaneh was appointed special advisor to the president on oil and gas affairs. Iran's minister of industry also resigned. No reason was given for the reshuffle, but Vaziri-Hamaneh is believed to have resisted the president's attempts to consolidate the oil bureaucracy to weed out high-salaried and, in the view of Ahmadinejad's administration, unnecessary managers. Tehran-based business analyst Nader Karimi-Jooni said the move also might have been due to the Oil Ministry's resistance to diverting a large share of hydrocarbon revenue into government spending programs. The ministry prefers to maintain a strong reserve for oil operations or reinvesting in future energy production. "I believe it is another gesture for increasing the government's popularity because the Oil Ministry is under pressure to spend all oil revenue and not to save it as a surplus or some other things," he said. "Even the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has recommended that all oil revenue should be spent for people."

ALI GHEDA APPOINTS DOZARI AS OIL MINISTER

Iran's President Replaces 2 Ministers
By Associated Press12:49 AM PDT, August 13, 2007
TEHRAN, Iran -- Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has replaced Iran's key oil and industry ministers, a major Cabinet reshuffle widely seen Monday as increasing his control over industries that are the source of most of the country's revenues. Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Mahaneh and Industry Minister Ali Reza Tahmasebi have resigned and been replaced by caretaker ministers, the official IRNA news agency said late Sunday. But Iran's major newspapers said Monday the two effectively had been dismissed by Ahmadinejad. State-run media gave no reason for the alleged dismissals and only carried statements from the president, who named the head of the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Gholam Hossein Nozari, as oil caretaker minister, and a Tehran chain store manager, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, as industry caretaker minister. Ahmadinejad was elected on a populist agenda in 2005, promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty and tackle unemployment. His failure to keep those promises has provoked increasingly fierce criticism from both conservatives and reformists in recent months. Ahmadinejad had promised to clamp down on what he claimed was the country's oil "mafias." He was forced to accept Mahaneh as oil minister after his two nominations for the post were rejected by Parliament. "Ahmadinejad now feels one of his own men can get a vote of confidence from the parliament and increase his control over the oil industry," reformist political analyst Saeed Shariati said.