Page 45 - IRANRptNov21

9.0 Industry & Sectors 9.1 Sector news
9.1.1 Oil & gas sector news
Iran crude exports to China disputed
In a statement directly contradicting Iranian government officials, the nation's Fars News Agency this week announced that Tehran was still offloading in excess of 1mn barrels per day (bpd) of oil to China despite ongoing US sanctions on the country and others doing business with Iran.
The Fars claim came a day after Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce chairman, Mr. Masoud Khansari, tweeted that sales to Beijing had plummeted since late March – the start of the Iranian traditional calendar.
Using the social media site to say exports had “drastically dropped” across the first half of 2021, when compared against 2018 figures prior to the imposition of sanctions by the Trump Administration, Khansari claimed the total amount of crude shipped to China now stood at around $11mn, equivalent to roughly 1,000 bpd.
In the year before US sanctions hit, Beijing purchased $9.5bn worth of crude. A day after the tweet by Khansari, Fars claimed that officials in the Tehran Chamber of Commerce had made the claim as they were against the “neutralisation of US oil sanctions”, continuing: "(W)hy does an entity such as the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, which is fully aware of the (full scope of the) Iran-China oil trade, try to sabotage the relations between Iran and China in the domestic sphere with such wrong information?"
In the days since, Khansari has also gone on record as saying: “(W)ith the continuation of sanctions, the Iranian economy will lose more opportunities” in a thinly veiled reference to Saudi Arabia’s increased oil shipments east to China.
In recent months, Saudi crude exports to Beijing have risen dramatically. The Fars-Tehran Chamber of Commerce spat aside, officially Tehran has not exported any crude to China, an important diplomatic ally in 2021, at least according to China’s General Administration of Customs (GAC).
This is known to be causing some embarrassment to the more conservative elements in the government of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran, who have for three years been pushing for improved relations with East Asia to help counter the ongoing sanctions.
It is commonly believed, however, that Iranian crude is still being shipped through third-party middlemen to avoid detection in much the same way previously banned Chinese PV panels were shipped through Taiwan, rebranded and then sold on to Western buyers.
The Iranian government does not officially disclose numbers relating to oil exports, although overall petrochemical capacity increased from 77mn tonnes in 2019 to 90mn tonnes a year later, and is expected to reach in excess of 100mn tonnes by the end of 2021.
Figures from Tehran’s Ministry of Petroleum also indicate exports to be rising in a commensurate manner, rising from 20mn tonnes two years ago to 25mn tonnes last year.
45 IRAN Country Report November 2021 www.intellinews.com