美国有线新闻 CNN 2015-04-03

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On one side of the table, the Middle Eastern nation of Iran. It insists its nuclear program is for civilian¹ power and other peaceful purposes. Members of the international community are concerned it could be used to make nuclear weapons.

 

On the other side of the table, the U.S., the U.K., China, France, Germany and Russia. They're considering lifting economic penalties, sanctions on Iran, if it puts a hold on its nuclear program. But as of last night, there were some hang-ups in the negotiations².

 

1. How quickly will Iran be allowed to develop its nuclear program after 10 years? How quickly will other countries lift their sanctions? And if Iran breaks the deal, will the sanctions be put back in place? We'll update you on whether an agreement is reached.

 

What happens with that potential deal can have an impact on the price of oil. Global crude prices plummeted³ last year as oil production in the U.S. shot up. Twenty fourteen was America's biggest one-year increase at oil production in more than a century. Hydraulic⁴ fracturing, also known as fracking, a way of extracting oil from the ground, factored in, so did horizontal drilling. The number of stories we've covered this year can further influence oil's price.

 

Look, they're, they're making, producing so much oil in this country, they're running out of places to put it. And that could cause some pressure on prices down the road, so three kind of story lines here:

 

1. We're producing one and a half million barrels a day more crude than the world is using and so you've got this big supply issue.

 

2. The Iran nuclear deal. If the deal is in, Iran could potentially be exporting legally more oil. That would be even more supply on top of more supply.

 

But here let me rein⁵ it back a little bit, because then there's this other big negative. What about Yemen? Yemen and Saudi Arabia leading, potentially, more ground offensives, a ground offensive into Yemen. An instability in the Middle East could cause oil prices to pop.

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