Page 45 - IRANRptOct21

Iran ‘restarts fuel exports to Afghanistan after messages from Taliban’
Iran’s Caspian Sea gas find ‘may be so large it could meet a fifth of European gas needs’
which comprises North and South Azadegan, North and South Yaran and Yadavaran.
Together, the group are estimated to contain at least 67bn barrels of oil in place (OIP), but the average recovery rate across West Karoun is just 5-6% with combined production from the fields currently running at 420,000 bpd. Output has risen from just 70,000 bpd in 2013 and Tehran believes that by increasing recovery across these fields they can achieve 1.2mn bpd of combined output.
The broader average crude recovery rate across Iranian fields is roughly 24%, against a global rate of around 35%.
Iran reportedly restarted fuel exports to Afghanistan a few days ago following a request from the emerging Taliban government.
The Taliban feel empowered by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to buy Washington-sanctioned Iran’s oil more openly, Reuters on August 23 reported an Iranian official as saying.
The price of gasoline in Afghanistan reached $900 per tonne as many Afghans drove out of cities, fearing a return to the harsh regime run under Sharia Law that the Sunni Muslim Taliban imposed when they were last in power two decades ago. To counter the price spike, the Taliban, it is said, asked Shi'ite Muslim Iran to keep the borders open for traders.
"The Taliban sent messages to Iran saying 'you can continue the exports of petroleum products'," Hamid Hosseini, board member and spokesperson of Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters' Union, in Tehran, told Reuters.
The Taliban, the news agency added, sent messages both to Iranian traders and to an Iranian chamber of commerce, which has close links to the government. Subsequently, the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) ended a ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan. It was brought in on August 6 because of Iran's anxieties about the safety of trading in the country.
Those concerns have been eased by the Taliban's attitude, Hosseini was also cited as saying.
Since the US under its previous Trump administration brought in a sanction against Tehran that bars fuel exports, Iran has turned to grey and black market petroleum product trading, part of which has involved the trucking of fuel to neighbours including Afghanistan.
Iran’s main exports to Afghanistan are in fact gasoline and gasoil. Iran exported about 400,000 tonnes of fuel to its neighbour from May 2020 to May 2021, according to a report published by PetroView, an Iranian oil and gas research and consultancy platform.
Afghanistan has no developed oil industry of its own. It is limited to six mini-refineries that produce just several thousand barrels per day of refined products each. They run on light oil from Turkmenistan.
Iran is hopeful of confirming a huge new gas deposit located in the Iranian sector of the Caspian Sea, large enough to supply around a fifth of Europe’s gas needs, according to the country’s Khazar Exploration and Production Company (KEPCO).
The Chalous structure could conceivably bring about a new gas hub in northern Iran to complement the southern gas hub centred on the massive South Pars field in the Persian Gulf that Iran shares with Qatar.
KEPCO is the principal developer for the field, but technical and financial assistance will come from Russia and China, according to OilPrice.com, which on August 20 said Chalous is a “geopolitical gamechanger”.
45 IRAN Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com