Page 41 - IRANRptJun20

Iran ‘expects 30% fall in petrochemical export revenues due to pandemic impacts’
Iran’s oil minister says pandemic means country’s gasoline stockpile is at “unprecedented historic level”
Iranians say Turkey ‘dragging feet’ on repair of cross-border pipeline out of service after March explosion
Iran's petrochemical export revenues will contract by nearly one-third year on year given market impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, according to the Iranian government-owned Press TV broadcaster.
The revenues would shrink by at least 30%, a report from parliament's Research Center cited by the media outlet has concluded. Depressed prices as well as problems with the transportation of goods across borders and by sea amid pandemic restrictions would be the main cause, the report added. Press TV gave an official figure of $12bn per annum for Iran’s petrochemical earnings.
The slump in demand was expected to make a clear and immediate impact on Iran's sales of methanol, liquefied petroleum gas and aromatics, while it was predicted that demand for other products such as polymers, urea and ammonia would gradually decrease over coming months.
Petrochemical exports have served as an increasingly important component of Iran's hard currency income since the US in 2018 re-imposed heavy sanctions on the country. In May last year, Washington tightened its sanctions to include an effort to drive all Iranian crude oil sales of world markets. Petrochemical products are more difficult for sanctions enforcers to target for reasons including their great diversity and the difficulty of tracing where petrochemical components of finished or intermediate products originated.
Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has said that Iran’s stockpiling of gasoline has reached an “unprecedented historic level” due to falling demand caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Radio Farda reported on May 12.
Last year, the average daily consumption of gasoline in Iran was 97mn litres, or around 25.5mn gallons, but consumption has fallen to 65mn litres a day in the past two months given the constraints on consumers caused by the health emergency, the news outlet said.
Except for a limited amount of gasoline unofficially exported to neighbouring countries, Iran cannot pursue large-scale exports of gasoline because of US sanctions. The hard currency earned on those limited exports will be greatly reduced given falling prices caused by the international oil price slump. Zanganeh also reportedly referred to less oil production in Iran causing petrochemical plants to suffer a 40% reduction in oil byproducts required for production purposes.
IRNA news agency on May 13 quoted Zanganeh as saying that Iran’s oil ministry has made strenuous efforts to ensure oil industry production did not come to a halt amid the pandemic, while also protecting its workers.
Turkey is dragging its feet on moving to repair a cross-border gas pipeline damaged by an explosion in late March, meaning Iranian gas exports still cannot flow to the country, Iran’s ​Press TV​ reported on May 13.
The pipeline has been blown up several times by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but after previous attacks it was usually quickly repaired, the news service said. An official at the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) was quoted by the Iranian Fars news agency as saying that since the latest explosion, on March 31, Turkey had not responded to Iranian requests. Moreover, Turkey’s representative at the Bazargan gas transmission station had left his post due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the NIGC official, Mehdi Jamshidi-Dana, was also cited as saying, adding that the type of repairs requested typically took three to seven days.
Fars speculated that the Turkish state pipeline operator Botas was unwilling to
41​ IRAN Country Report June 2020 www.intellinews.com