Tehran, Iran, May 9
By Kamyar Eghbalnejad - Trend:
The US decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal won’t have serious impact on Iran’s oil exports, Seyed Pirouz Moussavi, managing director of National Iranian Oil Terminals Company (NIOTC), told Trend May 9.
Iran was already prepared for all scenarios, Moussavi said.
The comment comes one day after the US President Donald Trump announced that the US walks away from the accord reached in 2015 between Tehran and the six world powers. Trump also announced that the US re-imposes the “highest level of economic sanctions” on the Islamic Republic.
“The world certainly needs Iran’s oil,” Moussavi said, adding that Iran will continue playing its key role in the global oil market.
Iran’s oil exports may face some decline, but the country will never leave the international oil market, he added.
Before it got hit with sanctions in 2012, Iran was exporting 2.5 mb/d of crude oil and gas condensate, of which 18 percent was supplied to the EU.
After 2012, the EU cut Iran oil purchase and Asian countries had to decrease Iranian oil import gradually, which led to a drop in export of Iranian oil and gas condensate to 1.2 mb/d in 2015.
After elimination of sanctions in 2016, based on nuclear agreement, Iran resumed its oil exports.
The latest statistics of Iran’s oil ministry indicates that Tehran exported 2.877 million barrels of oil per day (mb/d) on average to Asian and European countries in April, which is a new record in last one year.
The exports included 2.617 mb/d of crude oil and 260,000 b/d of condensate during the last month.
The share of the European countries in Iran’s oil exports was about 40 percent.
The former post-sanctions record high belongs to February 2017, when Iran exported 3 mb/d of oil and condensate to global markets.
