Page 33 - IRANRptJul19

Chinese customers ‘still buying Iranian LPG despite US sanctions threat’
according to recent threats made by the White House.
Speaking to reporters in the Austrian capital Vienna, the Iranian minister pointed to the five-hour gathering of the OPEC earlier in the day and said, “I think it was a good meeting and we reached what we were looking for.”
“Iran has been exempted from reducing oil production as in the past,” the oil minister noted.
He pointed to comments on OPEC’s increasing politicisation: “Whether we want to or not, since oil is somewhat political, we cannot rule out the fact that oil has a strong political nature, but some use the oil as a tool against producers like Iran and Venezuela.”
The remaining player who dares to defy the US edict is Beijing, with reports of tankers docking at Chinese ports in the past week.
China took 346,000 tonnes, or 80%, of Iran’s LPG exports in May, energy intelligence company Kpler estimated in a note. If the cargoes were loaded before the change of US energy policy on Iran they may not have contravened sanctions. Iran is likely to export a total of 400,000-500,000 tonnes in June with at least eight supertankers set to load the fuel in the coming weeks, Kpler added. Three supertankers have loaded LPG from Iran in June, of which at least one is headed for China, it said.
Tankers carrying Iranian oil and gas are notorious for masking their journeys by turning off satellite locator beacons, a technique known as “going dark”. Fuel is transferred between ships to hide the origin of cargoes.
Chinese refiners may well be circumventing American sanctions on importing Iranian oil. Global oil and gas/LNG consultancy FGE said in a note last week that it expects some degree of non-compliance, Bloomberg reported. Beijing probably isn’t complying with US sanctions on Iranian crude, US Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said last week, while adding that he didn’t have any hard evidence to show this.
A fire was on June 12 contained and extinguished at an offshore production platform that serves Iran’s phases 6, 7 and 8 in the development of the huge South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, the Iranian oil ministry’s news agency SHANA reported on June 12. Fireboats were quickly dispatched and there were no known fatalities, it added.
South Pars in the Persian Gulf is the world’s largest gas field. It is shared between Iran and Qatar, which refers to it as North Dome. In recent years, prior to the imposition of US unilateral sanctions, firms including France’s Total and China’s CNPC were among companies signed up to help Iran develop field, which is being developed in 24 phases. Total has since pulled out and CNPC’s continued participation is in question. On average, South Pars gas production stands at 610mn cm per day, exceeding the field rate of Qatar. Phases 6, 7 and 8 together produce 104mn square metres of sour gas and 158,000 b/d of gas condensate. They account for roughly 16% of the total output of South Pars.
“No one was reportedly killed by the fire at platform SPG9,” the head of Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), Mohammad Meshkinfam, told the news agency, noting that all employees were evacuated before the fire took hold.
Iran’s oil storage on land and at sea is on the rise in the face of the US effort to drive Iranian crude exports to zero.
Storage options are filling up as Tehran bids to keep its ageing fields operational and crude flowing, data and industry sources told Reuters on May 23. Iran faces the challenge of parking unsold stocks of oil until buyers, possibly on the grey market, can be found.
If Iran cannot keep its oil flowing, disruption could damage its future activities
33 IRAN Country Report July 2019 www.intellinews.com