Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 17
By Rahim Zamanov - Trend:
The government should not wait for the oil sanctions to be lifted in a six-month period, Hassan Khosrojerdi, head of Iran's oil products exporters' union said, Mehr News Agency reported on Dec.17.
"The sanctions may not be lifted even until the end of the four-year term of the current administration," he added.
He went on to note that the United Stated has stopped importing crude oil and will become an oil exporter country in near future.
"The US has stopped importing oil and other countries are willing to increase their oil output, so the market will soon face 4 million barrels of surplus oil," Khosrojerdi said.
He continued that the government should revise its oil policies, because in 2050 the solar power will take the place of oil and gas in the global markets.
The International Energy Agency said on Dec. 11 that Iran - once OPEC's second-largest oil producer - will be unable to sustain an increase in crude exports that support its economy when some measures to curb those shipments are eased, Bloomberg reported.
The European Union said last month that it intends to suspend a ban on insuring tankers carrying Iranian oil in December or January.
The U.S. said it will stop forcing buyers to cut purchases, even if they still aren't allowed to increase them.
Iran's oil shipments to other nations rose by 89,000 barrels a day to 850,000 barrels in November, the IEA said, including both crude and condensates.
The country cut the amount of oil stored on tankers to 22 million barrels by the end of the month from 37 million barrels in October, according to the agency.
Iran produced 3.5 million barrels of crude a day at the start of 2012, before EU sanctions took effect, ranking it second among members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, behind Saudi Arabia, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The IEA estimated Iran's daily crude production at 2.71 million barrels in November, up 30,000 barrels from October, and ranking it sixth within OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Venezuela.
Iran sold $84.38 billion of crude oil in 2011, according to data from ITC TradeMap, a venture between the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. Its total exports of goods fetched $130.5 billion in the same year, the data show.