Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 6
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran’s oil ministry has rejected "rumors" about lowering crude oil refining to boost oil exports.
"The rumors from a participant during a live IRIB TV2 program, about cutting oil to refineries for boosting crude oil export are totally baseless," Oil Ministry announced on its website.
The statement says that Iranian refineries were supplied with crude oil as much as last year.
Iran’s current oil production level stands at 3.8 million barrels per day, while according to Iran’s Oil Ministry’s official statistics, it exported about 2.265 mb/d of crude oil during last month of Iranian fiscal year (Feb.21-Mar.20).
That’s while the county’s nominal refining capacity is about 1.8 mb/d, but regarding the production and exports volume, only 1.544 mb/d of crude oil remains for domestic use.
However, the head of National Iranian Oil Company Ali Kardor has said in February that Iran had about 75 million barrels (mb) of oil and gas condensate storage on water in Persian Gulf in 2015, but currently the volume has reached 25 mb and it is expected the volume will reach zero by May.