Responding to European Union sanctions on Iran’s banking and energy sectors, including a boycott of new oil contracts with Iran, the government said it would no longer export oil to Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece and Portugal, the official Press TV reported. The announcement helped drive the price of crude to nearly $102 a barrel Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Europe accounts for about 18 percent of Iran’s crude exports, with Greece, Italy and Spain among the main buyers, AP said.
The cutoff was announced after state media reported that Iran has started loading fuel rods into an aging nuclear reactor used to make medical isotopes and was set to formally declare that an underground bunker complex for uranium enrichment is now fully operational.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unveiling a total of three nuclear projects on Wednesday in a ceremony in Tehran being shown live on state television, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The third project is a line of new carbon fiber centrifuges, which state television said have more output and enrich uranium faster than older centrifuges.
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