Page 44 - IRANRptOct21

Harder to detect petrochemical and petroleum exports biggest earner for Iran amid sanctions
Iranian oil production up year on year
production in joint fields is commendable.” Yadavaran is estimated to hold 30bn barrels of OIP, 35% of which is light oil in the Fahlian layer.
Oil production in West Karoun increased from 70,000 barrels per day in 2013 to the current 420,000 bpd under the previous administration of President Hassan Rouhani.
Despite the massive reserves, the fields have an average recovery rate of just 5-6%, compared with the broader average crude recovery rate across Iranian fields of roughly 24% and the global rate of around 35%.
Tehran believes that by increasing recovery across these fields they can achieve 1.2mn bpd of combined output.
Azadegan, which is home to around 32bn barrels of OIP across the Sarvak, Kazhdomi, Godvan and Fahilan layers, is Iran’s largest oilfield. The giant reservoir is shared with Iraq, where it is known Majnoon (Insane) on account of its size.
Petrochemicals and petroleum products worth almost $20bn were reportedly in 2020 the main source of Iran’s export revenues, at twice the value of the country’s crude oil shipments.
Iranian oil ministry and central bank data was cited by Reuters in a September 17 report outlining how valuable the petrochemical and petroleum products industries have become to the Islamic Republic in the face of US sanctions aimed at choking off its oil and gas industry export earnings.
Fuels and petrochemicals are more difficult for sanctions enforcers to trace than crude oil. Crude can be identified as Iranian by its grade and other features, with big oil tankers more easily tracked via satellite.
"The world is vast and the ways of evading sanctions are endless," Hamid Hosseini, board member of Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters' Union in Tehran, told Reuters.
Competitive prices and Iran's location, close to major shipping lanes, made its products attractive, he added.
Another key point is that there are also many more buyers of refined products than there are importers with refineries able to process Iranian crude.
Iranian exports of relatively small consignments of fuel to Iran’s neighbours, using trucks, are, meanwhile, tough for the US Treasury to detect.
Iranian gasoline exports rose 600% y/y in 2020 to 8mn tonnes, or 180,000 b/d, according to Iran’s customs administration. Iran has invested heavily in becoming self-sufficient in gasoline production. As recently as 2018, the country was importing gasoline.
Iran's revenues from gasoline exports were an estimated $3bn in 2020, Hosseini was further reported as saying.
Iranian petrochemical capacity rose to 90mn tonnes a year in 2020 from 77mn tonnes in 2019 and it is set to exceed 100mn tonnes in 2021, the Iranian oil ministry said.
Iran’s crude oil production rose 37% during the first five months of the current Iranian calendar year compared to March 21-August 20 of last year.
State-run media quoted secondary OPEC data sources showing that output had risen from 1.9mn barrels per day to 2.5mn bpd.
The figure marks a sizeable rebound following a major fall-off since 2017, when production ran at 3.9mn bpd, dropping to 3.5mn bpd in 2018, 2.4mn bpd in 2019 and 2mn bpd in 2020 in the wake of the US’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The National Iranian Oil Co.’s (NIOC) output increase has been partially facilitated by recent work to raise capacity at the West Karoun oilfield cluster,
44 IRAN Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com