BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 21
By Elnur Baghishov - Trend
If Iran does not depend on the energy sector, the sanctions and other negative factors will have less impact on the country economy, Iranian expert on oil issues Mahmoud Khaghani told Trend.
According to Khaghani, US sanctions even brought benefits to Iran. Thus, during the global economic crisis in 2008, due to the US sanctions, Iranian banks could not connect to the banking system of Western countries.
Khaghani added that this helped Iranian banks not go bankrupt following the bankruptcy of many Western countries' banks. On the other hand, there was a great demand for energy in the Western market, but there was no money to buy supplies that Iran could have offered.
"Currently, taking into account the US sanctions, Iran has put on its agenda the export of a number of oil products, including gasoline, petrochemicals," he said adding that this time, the sanctions did not much harm to Iran's oil sector.
"Iran acts as a trade gateway between Central Asia, the West and the East. Therefore, the sanctions will not seriously damage Iran's trade," he said.
Khaghani noted that recent sale of Iran's gasoline to Venezuela is an important step not to be affected by the US attitude, as the purchase and sale of oil products between Iran and Venezuela are carried out without dollars.
"Meanwhile, the US wants to conduct trade operations in the energy market in dollars to have full control over the world energy market," he said.
The US imposed new sanctions on Iran in November 2018. Over the past period, the sanctions affected Iranian oil exports, more than 700 banks, companies and individuals. Iran has put increasing oil exports on its agenda due to a sharp decline in crude oil exports.
Iran has 125 oil fields and 59 gas fields. The country's total hydrocarbon reserves are estimated at 836 billion barrels. With available technology and equipment, Iran can extract 239 billion barrels. Thus, 29 percent of the country hydrocarbon reserves are recoverable, while 71 percent remain underground.