Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 25 / Trend F.Milad /
Iran has swapped some 20,000 barrels of crude oil per day over the past two months, the National Iranian Oil Company's director for international affairs said in Tehran on Monday.
Mohsen Qamsari told IRNA news agency that the volume of oil swaps would reach 70,000 bpd by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2012).
Increasing the volume of swaps to 2 million barrels was not possible because Iran's northern neighbors had not such a capacity, he added. So, almost one million barrels of crude was swapped in the mentioned period of time.
Managing Director of National Iranian Oil Company Ahmad Ghalebani said earlier that Iran received 300,000 barrels of oil from the Caspian littoral states in mid-July and will transfer it to Persian Gulf terminals in 90 days.
After 13 years of oil swap with Caspian littoral countries to the Persian Gulf via Iran, four major foreign companies - Germany's Select Energy Trading, Dragon Oil Emirate, Swiss Vitol and Ireland's Caspian Oil Development - refused to update the oil swap agreement in April 2010 and Iran's crude oil swap rate dropped to zero.
From 1997 to 2010 Iran profited $146 million from oil swap operations ($1 per barrel). Earlier, the Iranian former oil minister urged the suspension of the oil swap due to its economical non-profitability and in an effort to protect national interests.
The Caspian Sea holds 17-33 billion barrels of oil, and is estimated to produce as much as 8,000 billion cubic meters of gas.