Azerbaijan , Baku, August 04 /Trend D.Khatinoglu, T. Konyayeva/
Iran has again failed to sell the second heavy oil cargo at the international oil exchange at Kish Island.
The first trading session at the Kish International Oil Exchange on the day of its commissioning 13 July was a failure, which the Iranian officials explained by "price disagreement". However, Singaporean expert Hooman Peimani, who originated from Iran, believes that the failure has political motives.
Iran priced a second heavy crude oil cargo at $113.87 per barrel in the international oil exchange at Kish Island Wednesday, which has failed to sell due to price disagreement, Pananews reported.
The National Iranian Oil Company disagreed with customer's price offers of $109.87 per barrel. The oil cargo has failed to sell for the second time.
Peimani, Head of Energy Security Division at the Singaporean Energy Studies Institute, told Trend via phone from Singapore that given a price of $130 per a barrel for crude oil on international markets, in fact $113.87 set for a barrel of heavy oil is quiet just and suitable. Failure in the trading sessions had political motives.
"The international sanctions make trades with Iran expensive, cause problems with payments and complicate deals, threatening further U.S. sanctions," Peimani said.
The U.S. Northeastern University Professor Kamran Dadkhah earlier wrote to Trend in an email that trading at the Kish International Oil Exchange in the first day of its operation has failed because of the higher price as compared with the international value and the refusal of Iran's Oil Ministry to offer discounts to potential buyers.
"The reason that the deal didn't go through was that the price demanded by the Oil Ministry was higher than the international price. Furthermore, potential buyers pointed out that due to international sanctions and restrictions on transfer of money for Iranian enterprises, they should receive further discount but the Oil Ministry did not agree," Dadkhah underlined.
Iran says its oil price is just and no need for any discount.
Previously, Iran's third attempt to sell a furnace fuel oil cargo was successful on the international oil bourse at Kish Island after two times failure since June 2010.
Peimani believes that selling heavy oil has particular problems, because some of countries actually lack refineries to process heavy crude oil. So, heavy oil has restricted customers, but still of demand. "As I said, there are some technical problems, but the unsuccessful trading sessions on Iranian exchange definitely have political reasons."
Iran 's refusal to abandon its nuclear activities has resulted in resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council in 2010, as well as additional unilateral sanctions approved by the U.S. Congress and the foreign ministers of all EU countries, which were primarily directed against the banking, financial and energy sectors of Iran.
Restrictions imposed by the EU include the ban on the sale of equipment, technologies and services to Iran's energy sector which is a major source of revenue for the Iranian regime; the same measure refers to the refining industry.