Azerbaijan, Baku, May 24/Trend/
The suspension in Iran's oil swap operation on the Caspian Sea during the past 14 months has put the Neka oil terminal on the verge of complete closure, Mehr News Agency reported on Monday.
Neka Oil Terminal is currently one of the Iran's biggest oil swap terminals in the Caspian Sea.
After 13 years of oil swap from the Caspian littoral countries through Iran's route to the Persian Gulf, foreign companies refused to re-sign oil swap agreement with Iran on April 2010 and Iran's crude oil swap rate slid reaching zero.
Lack of extension in swap agreement from Select Energy Trading, Dragon Oil Emirate, Swiss Vitol and Ireland's Caspian oil development is considered to be the main reason why the international companies chose pipeline routes of Baku - Novorossiysk and Caspian consortium pipe line to transfer Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan export oil to their destination markets.
More than 100, 000 Caspian Sea oil barrels have conveyed through Iran's route to the Persian Gulf from 1997 to 2010. Iran made $146 million in profit from the oil swap during this period , though Iran's oil minister Masoud Mir Kazemi recently announced the suspension of oil swap due to lacking enough economic profits.
Neka oil swap terminal production from central Asian countries was 100,000 to 150,000 oil barrels per day during the Fourth Development Plan (2005-2009) and the figures were expected to increase during the Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan (2010-2015) from 5 million tons oil barrels to 18 million tons
Neka oil terminal pipe line and reservoir has the capacity to swap 500,000 oil barrels to Tehran and Tabriz refineries, however the reserves remains useless after 438 days halt in oil swap .