Page 12 - AsianOil Week 04 2023

AsianOil POLICY AsianOil

US says it will crank up pressure on China

not to buy Iranian oil on shadow market

CHINA THE US is to crank up the pressure on China to our agenda.”
stop buying Iranian oil on the shadow market. As reported earlier this week, Iran’s oil
China has bought The White House is poised to intensify efforts exports appear to be surging thanks to shadow
Iranian oil on the in enforcing sanctions aimed at pressuring the market barrels sent to China under the banner
shadow market for Islamic Republic not to cross the line with its of shipments from Malaysia.
years. nuclear activities. The official data show Malaysia as China’s
“China is the main destination of illicit third-biggest provider of crude last month,
exports by Iran,” Robert Malley, the Biden behind only Saudi Arabia and Russia, but
administration’s special envoy for Iran, told Malaysian exports to China on that scale are
Bloomberg Television on January 23, adding unfeasible, noted Bloomberg on January 20,
that talks to dissuade Beijing from buying such saying they were almost triple the average daily
exports would be “intensified”. crude output from the Southeast Asian nation
Malley denied that the US is—as some energy over 9M22.
traders insist—content for Iranian oil to be on “China’s crude imports from Iran picked
global markets as it is a positive factor in restrain- up to a new record in the last month of 2022,”
ing oil prices. Armen Azizan, an analyst at Vortexa, said in a
He also backed the recent line taken by other report. The report also noted that Iran—which
US officials that talks with Iran on reviving the has to sell oil under the radar given US sanc-
2015 nuclear agreement, or JCPOA, have largely tions—exported 1.3mn barrels/day of oil in
broken down. The US was instead concentrating November, and in December stayed near the
on stopping Iran from using violence in cracking highest level seen in four years.
down on protesters at home and on preventing Malaysian waters have long been used by oil
it from backing Russian operations in Ukraine, traders dodging sanctions by transferring crude
Malley said. and petroleum products from one tanker to
“Our focus has shifted to Iran killing its own another, sometimes disguising the origin. Bar-
citizens and what we can do to counter that, and rels from Iran and Venezuela are known to have
to Iran assisting in Russia’s killing of Ukrainian been re-branded as oil from Malaysia and Oman
citizens and what we can do to deter and stop before being shipped to China, the world’s big-
that,” he said. “The nuclear deal has not been on gest oil importer. ™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 04 27•January•2023