Iran imports millions of barrels of oil for domestic consumption every year, while it sits on one the world's largest oil reserves and has second largest gas endowment after Ru ssia.

In some of the oil fields in southern Iran the associated gas is simply burnt off. It is a tragedy for a country that possesses one of the largest oil and gas reservoirs of the world to be an importer of the same commodity. True, there are some countries that have large reserves, but at the same time are importers, but that is another story, for their domestic production does not meet their domestic demand. But in our case, it is very sad that we cannot refine enough oil to meet our consumption whereas Iran is the first Middle Eastern country where oil was discovered in the early twentieth century.

At one stage our rulers were not wise enough to realize the importance of oil and in order to get peanuts for themselves they auctioned our oil reserves through Darsy and Reuter contracts. Iran paid a heavy price to rid itself of those despicable contracts, but even so, it ended up with the consortium in 1954 which was just as detrimental to the country's interests as the previous contracts.

Some quarter of a century has lapsed since the victory of the glorious Islamic Revolution. But today, the figures on public life are not very encouraging. Indeed the Iranian people has spared no effort in supporting their officials from the very first day of the victory of the revolution, be it against the rebels inside the country, in the war fronts, in bearing the hardship in all spheres of life, in extending their support to them on various occasions, or in going to the polling booths, etc. etc.

Having full support of the people, our officials are expected to show courage, discuss the problems with nation openly and frankly, rely on their support and once and forever find practical solutions to the problems of the masses before it will be too late.