Economics
Can This Old BP Oil Refinery Help Iran Beat Donald Trump?
The aim is to turn the war-scarred plant into a producer of quality fuel so Iran doesn’t have to rely on imports.
The plant sits in Abadan, Iran.
Photographer: Golnar Motevalli/Bloomberg
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At the Middle East’s oldest oil refinery, giant, yellow-brick silos that stored Iranian crude and fuel products are mottled by bullet marks from the war with Iraq in the 1980s. One has a large puncture from a tank shell.
The conflict is now economic, but this area of southwest Iran near the Persian Gulf is strategically important again. U.S. President Donald Trump’s talk of jettisoning the nuclear deal that was supposed to plug the Islamic Republic back into the global marketplace has given fresh urgency to plans to transform a region as rich in petroleum reserves as it is in battle scars.