Tehran, Iran, Jan.10
Trend:
Iran is to initiate the third oil offering at its energy exchange, and the transactions will be carried out in rials. The reasons for this move - foreign currency rate fluctuations, along with the US sanctions on Iran.
“It’s one of the important issues for the government and parliament," the member of Parliament energy commission Ali Golmoradi told Trend.
Iran's first contract on Oct. 28 had 8 cargoes of 35,000 barrels each at $74.85 per barrel purchased on the stock market by three brokerages.
In the second deal on IRENEX in November, traders bought all the 700,000 barrels of Iranian light crude on offer at the time.
"There have been series of problems in crude oil sales via Energy Exchange," Golmoradi said. "The government is dependent on oil revenues, and sanctions have created many restrictions in this field and prevent easy access to oil income."
"The strategy to offer oil at the energy exchange would lead to transparent and healthy rivalry in the private sector, it’s a good approach that could have been started earlier," he added.
Golmoradi also added that Iran's private sector should get more involved in this matter. He also spoke about some problems regarding the oil sell via the exchange.
"Although the energy exchange had a successful start and seemed like a solution to problems, in some cases, because of the US exemptions for the oil buyers, the oil offering at the exchange had interrupted," said the official.
"The process of currency transactions were the other problems in oil offering at the energy exchange. Offering oil at the exchange was first approved to be settled by 50 percent in rial and 50 percent in US dollar, but with the applied changes next oil offering would be traded 100 percent in rial," he said.