Azerbaijan, Baku, July 9/ Trend D.Khatinoglu /
Iran has established three consortiums with participation of domestic private companies to evade the Western countries' sanctions over Iran's oil export, including stopping insurance covers to ships that carry Iranian oil, FNA reported.
The head of Iranian Oil Exporters Union Hassan Khosrojerdi said that Iran's oil export has decreased significantly as a result of sanctions and the crude oil exports allegedly declined to 1.6 mbpd.
"The Western countries was pursuing the full cut of Iran's oil export, but have not done yet, fortunately," he said.
Khosrojerdi said that Saudi Arabia raised its oil production above 10 mbpd to replace Iran's oil with Saudi crude, but the API degree of Iranian crude oil defers from Saudi's and they can never take Iran's place in international oil markets.
"One of three consortiums has already started to help government in oil export issue with participating 65 members, fortunately all of the companies trading with this consortium are keen to preserve Iranian oil purchase and this consortium's major goal is deal with the Western companies.
Iranian Parliament has approved a bill allowing private sector to involve in oil export in April, permitting this sector to sell 20 percent of the country's total crude oil exports, namely 400,000 bpd.
On the other hand, on July 8 Oil Ministry and Central Bank have agreed to transfer the exports of some 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day to the private sector in order to circumvent the sanctions.
The European Union's oil embargo on Iran came into force on July 1 and a new U.S. law penalizing countries that do business with the Central Bank of Iran by denying their banks' access to the U.S. market came into force on June 28.
According to the reports, Iran's oil export has been reduced from 2.3 mbpd to 1.2 mbpd since 2011.