Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 8
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Banning tankers that transport Iranian oil from entering Saudi Arabia's waters can't affect the Islamic Republic's oil exports, Parviz Mina, former member of OPEC Long-Term Strategy Committee, told Trend.
Financial Times quoted traders and shipbrokers Apr. 4 that Riyadh had banned tankers carrying Iranian oil from entering Saudi waters.
The move comes as the Kingdom attempts to curb Iran's efforts to boost crude exports in the post-sanctions era. Tehran and Riyadh have long been geopolitical antagonists, and this move is but the latest expression of a series of proxy wars being fought between the two countries.
Commenting on the issue, Mina said that tankers, which load oil from Iran's Kharg and Lavan - the main two Iranian oil terminals, do not need to enter the Saudi territorial waters to sail to other countries, and Saudi territorial waters are hardly a major factor in Persian Gulf shipping lines.
He further said a problem may occur only if a tanker loads oil from both Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is mostly unlikely.
"Very rarely a tanker would load two types of crude oil," added Mina, who served as director of International Affairs of the NIOC(National Iranian Oil Company).
"So, this will not impose any negative effect on Iran's crude export and should be considered as a new rhetoric between the two rival countries," he said.
A source in Iran's oil ministry also told Trend April 6 that the Iranian foreign ministry will pursue the issue.
Iran's tanker arm - the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) has around 70 tankers, but many of them are ageing and require valid insurance, testing, inspection and certification, known as ship classification, to be able to ply international waters again.
The NITC has a fleet carrying capacity of over 76 million barrels of oil, however the estimates by end of 2015 suggests that the main part of the capacity was busy storing 30-50 million barrels of Iran's oil on sea.
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