Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.7
By Emil Ilgar – Trend:
Iran’s private sector hasn’t succeeded to export any crude oil yet, Mohsen Qamsari, director of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), told IRNA Oct. 7.
Qamsari said that the private sector should find new oil markets, or NIOC won’t be delivering crude oil to them for export.
During the sanctions era in 2012, some private dealers were involved in crude oil export to bypass the restrictions, imposed by western countries on NIOC.
As the result, Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani sold millions barrels of crude worth €2.5 billion, but has never deposited the earnings to NIOC’s bank account.
Arrested in 2013, Zanjani has been sentenced to death for corruption as the 42 year-old businessman was convicted of fraud and economic crimes earlier this year.
Qamsari said that international refineries like to purchase crude oil directly from NIOC. He added that the private sector is engaged in oil products and relatively gas condensate exports.
Iran exported about 2 million barrels per day (mb/d), of which about 93 percent went to Asian markets, including China, India, South Korea and Japan in August. Iran exports about 108,000 b/d of crude oil to Turkey as well and a little amount of spot oil also was sold to EU.
The country also exported about 416,000 b/d of gas condensate in March-September, according to Custom Administration’s statistics.
Before sanctions, Iran was exporting 480,000 b/d of oil to EU.