For a country whose economy is heavily dependent on oil revenue, such a slump would be a severe blow.

"When the war ends and with summer approaching, the price per barrel will drop to 18 or 19 dollars", Mehdi Mir-Moezi, head of the state oil company NIOC, told the government daily Iran on March 22.

Iran's budget for the current financial year was fixed on the basis of a barrel of oil selling for around 21 dollars, so any fall below that figure would plunge the country into deficit.

Iran, a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), relies heavily on the 18 billion dollars annual revenue from producing around 3.6 million barrels per day (bpd) and exporting around 2.3 million bpd.

But deputy oil minister Hojatollah Ghanimi-fard brushed off the prospect of a sudden increase in Iraqi oil production after the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.

"An immediate increase in Iraqi oil production is not possible, since it needs substantial investment to modernise facilities badly damaged by more than 10 years of economic sanctions, not to mention a need for the country to be made safe," Ghanimi-fard was quoted as saying by the newspaper Hamshahri.

An analyst from the Iranian Petro-Energy Information Network (SHANA), a news agency close to the oil ministry, told AFP on the other hand that no-one in the US administration would work to lower international oil prices, as it would not be in their interests.

"Overflowing the oil market with the Iraqi oil is not on the oil and non-oil factions' agenda among US officials, since they want to keep it in a bracket with an average price of 18 to 20 dollars per barrel, not letting it fall to 10 dollars a barrel or even lower," the analyst added.

He also said that although taking charge of Iraqi production would leave Washington with enormous power to control oil markets worldwide, there would be no move to cut international prices, because "US Arab allies in the Persian Gulf will be mostly affected and even European allies would not back it."

Before the US-led war on Iraq began, Iranian officials were predicting that Iraqi oil production would be harmed or even that the Iraqis themselves would set their oil wells on fire.

Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said: "Oil resources will be damaged and the oil market will become disturbed and unstable."

But his prediction turned out to be unfounded, since the US and British forces were able to secure Iraqi oil wells and installations in the early days of the war.

With little damage to its oil installations and comfortably sitting on 11 percent of the world's oil reserves, the second largest after Saudi Arabia, Iraq will be able to rapidly resume and eventually increase its oil exports, thus becoming a threat for Iran in the international oil market.

At the moment, production is 2.2 million barrels a day, well below the OPEC quota of 3.2 million, and the objective of the opposition planning Iraq's reconstruction is to increase output to up to six million barrels a day within six to eight years, provided the industry receives some 40 billion dollarsbillion euros) in investment.

By allowing international oil companies to participate in Iraq's lucrative oil industry, opposition figures hope to revive their country's economy, ruined by years of economic sanctions, they said at a conference in London last weekend.

Such plans are considered to be a real threat to Tehran, which can expect no favors from US President George W. Bush, who will presumably taking Iraq off his "axis of evil", leaving only Iran and North Korea.

SPACE.WIRE