http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102502840.html?hpid=topnewsOil traders said that even if the chances of military conflict with Iran were small, the huge run-up in oil prices that would result encourages some speculators and investment funds to bid up the price of oil, adding a premium of $3 to $15 a barrel.
"It will be chaos. . . . I can't really see it," said Abdulsamad al-Awadi, an oil trading consultant and former executive at Kuwait Petroleum. "Having been in the marketplace for almost 30 years, I can't see a scenario for it. Or precautionary measures
. There are no precautionary measures."
"If war breaks out, anticipate that all hell will break loose in the oil markets," said Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, a Washington oil consulting firm.
"If it's a clinical strike like the one that Israel carried out on the Syrian installations and no one admitted to doing it, you'd have a fierce reaction from Iran, but it would probably die down," said Leo Drollas, deputy executive director and chief economist of the Center for Global Energy Studies, a London think tank founded by former Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani. "If it were a botched job with lots of targets and civilians dying and Iranians retaliating . . . it could escalate and the price of oil could shoot up to God knows where."