“The prices would go unlimited,” Mr. Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. “I can’t give you a number.”  Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes.  Mr. Badri, a former oil executive who has headed the oil industry in Libya and served as deputy prime minister of that country, called for a peaceful solution, and he hinted that an additional conflict in the Middle East besides the continuing conflict in Iraq would be severe and long-lasting.  “If something happened there, nobody would be able to solve it,” he said, referring to a war involving Iran.  He said that current geopolitical tensions were among the main reasons for the high price of oil. He said that a shortfall in refining capacity and a weak dollar were other factors, but he reiterated OPEC’s position that speculation on oil markets probably was the most important one.  He insisted that reserves of oil were plentiful and that worries about scarcity were misplaced.  Supplies from Russia and Norway and other nations outside the 13-member OPEC will keep growing, helped by technologies like turning gas and coal into liquid fuel and extracting oil from tar sands and shale, he said.  Even so, he also sought to assuage concerns about a supply shock, saying that OPEC members, which contribute about 40 percent of daily worldwide production, were already investing $160 billion in new production capacity up to 2012.  But he said investment in future capacity could be frozen, potentially sharpening a dispute with customers over whether sufficient steps were being taken to meet demand.  Steps by the European Union and in the United States to cut dependence on fossil fuels meant that OPEC had no alternative but to take a cautious approach before going ahead with plans to invest up to $540 billion in oil production up to 2020.  “If we don’t see the demand, we are not going to invest,” Mr. Badri said, adding there was doubt over how much money members would invest after 2012. OPEC members “don’t want to spend their money on something they cannot use,” he said.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: OPEC Leader Issues Warning About Iran and Oil Supply. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The head of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries warned that oil prices would experience an “unlimited” increase in the event of a military conflict involving Iran.