BOSTON  --  After spiking to more than $65/per barrel yesterday, oil prices open this morning right where they started yesterday at $63.94. The spikes were prompted by global unease surrounding Iran's resumption of nuclear testing, says Peter Tertzakian, Chief Energy Economist for Arc Financial Corporation and author of upcoming book A Thousand Barrels a Second (McGraw-Hill: 2006), and intensified by calls from western nations to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council.

Among the scenarios being considered, sanctions to include bans on buying Iranian oil. This is just the beginning of what will become an ongoing and broad-reaching issue.

How will this affect American consumers? Tertzakian says the potential is significant, "Iran is the fourth largest producer of oil in the world. That's notable enough, but more importantly, Iran controls the northern side of the straight of Hormuz, the 50-kilomter-wide waterway through which flows 20 percent of the world's daily oil supply. Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar all transport much of their oil through this choke point."

History has shown us that trouble in Iran easily translates to trouble at the pump. In 1979 oil prices doubled in the midst of Iranian Civil War. The rebalancing act that followed was not an easy one, but it could be even harder for U.S. consumers to recover this time.

"Unlike in the 1970s, when nuclear power and clean coal technology emerged as alternative fuels, there is no more oil which can be squeezed out of the system," Tertzakian explains, "Even promising technologies like fuel cells will be difficult to adopt and utilize in sufficient scale, in part because of the entrenched standards of the last 100 years. Instead, the solutions of the next ten to twenty years will come from using old fuels and technologies in radically alternative ways."

Peter Tertzakian began his career in oil exploration for the Chevron Corporation working in field operations, seismic data processing and geophysical software development.

In 1990, he left the oil and gas business and entered the financial services industry with a specialty in analyzing technology and energy-related businesses. His book, A Thousand Barrels a Second (McGraw Hill:2006), hits bookstores this month (www.1000barrels.com).