Azerbaijan, Baku, May.12/ Trend F.Karimov/
The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines is currently active with 164 ships in international waters, the Fars News Agency quoted managing director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Mohammad Hossein Dajmar as saying.
Sanctions which hit the country's national shipping industry made the private sector to become more active in this field, he noted.
However, the sanctions dropped the IRISL revenues by half to below $1 billion, he said.
In July 2012, Dajmar said that international sanctions have helped Iran break Europe's "monopoly" on the shipping insurance industry.
"The sanction imposed by the foreign insurance firms made U.S. launch Iranian insurance of P&I and this has been gifted to U.S. by the sanctions," Dajmar said.
"Before this, the Europeans had the monopoly of shipping insurances and a few number of countries owned the insurance firms and coverage but we have now succeeded in starting Iranian shipping insurance through government's cooperation," he added.
In July 2012, Iran called back seven of its 10 tankers working in European Union, Mehr News Agency reported, saying this step is Iran's way of applying sanctions against the Union.
An Iran National Oil Company's official told Mehr anonymously that Iran's 10 super tankers have been sailing in EU, but recently seven of them have been called back to Iran from Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.
"There is a need for more tankers to ship Iranian oil to international markets, but because of sanctions, they have to avoid some countries to ship Iranian crude oil," he said.
In January, the latest European Union sanctions against Iran allowed ships to burn fuel made from Iranian oil if it's produced and loaded in another country, according to the insurers of 90 percent of the world's fleet, Bloomberg reported.
EU has cut its Iranian oil purchase alongside stopping insurance, reinsurance, Protection & Indemnity (P&I) and technical certification to ships that carry Iranian oil since July 1.
Recently Iran said that the Iranian Kish P&I club is ready to provide protection and indemnity insurance to Iranian tankers. Tehran says that domestic insurance companies will insure the oil tankers thereafter.