Page 6 - MEOG Week 04 2021

MEOG PIPELINES & TRANSPORT MEOG

As pressure eases, Iranian

exports edge upwards

IRAN IRANIAN Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zan- Engineering and Development Co. (PEDEC)
ganeh said last week that a sharp increase has has said that work on the first phase of Iran’s stra-
been experienced in the country’s oil exports tegic Goreh-Jask oil pipeline project is now more
following the end of the Presidency of Donald than 70% complete.
Trump in the US. The company’s deputy director of the project,
While the increases have been modest, with Ali Jafarzadeh reiterated that the phase will be
Bloomberg quoting various industry sources as completed by the end of the current Iranian cal-
saying that the gains are around 30,000-50,000 endar year, which ends on March 20.
barrels per day (bpd), they represent increased In December, PEDEC’s managing director
confidence on behalf of buyers though covert Touraj Dehghani said that the first phase would
practices continue to be employed to maintain have a capacity of more than 300,000 bpd with
a lack of clarity about sales. more than 400km of pipe having now been laid.
Given China’s history of working around Meanwhile, the full 1,000km project will have a
the sanctions to continue buying Iranian oil, it total capacity of 1mn bpd when complete by the
would be unsurprising if sales had increased, end of 2021.
while Bloomberg quoted a trader as saying that Work began on the line last April, with Pres-
Iranian flows had ticked upwards. ident Hassan Rouhani saying at the time that
Throughout the ongoing period of sanc- “Jask will turn into Iran’s key hub of oil exports.”
tions, Iran has maintained a base level of export The pipeline will link the Gulf port city of
through various covert means, including turn- Goreh in Bushehr province to Jask on the Sea
ing off shipping transponders to make vessels ‘go of Oman. At present the Kharg Island terminal
dark’. Meanwhile, Zanganeh admitted that it had in the Gulf accounts for 90% of the country’s oil
sought to obfuscate the origin of cargoes, saying exports.
“whatever [Iran] export[s] is not under Iran’s Of the $1.8bn total project cost, the Goreh-
name” and supporting “any proposal for selling Jask pipeline is anticipated to come in at around
Iranian crude”. $1.1bn, with the remainder being spent on the
He had previously been asked if Iran was still development of the port. The Jask port will
selling oil on international markets and replied: feature 20 tanks with a total storage capacity of
“officially nothing”, with covert sales understood 10mn barrels of crude, with plans in plans to
to be continuing to Chinese clients as well as expand export infrastructure.
quantities piped and trucked into neighbouring Meanwhile, Jafarzadeh noted that more
countries, particularly Iraq. than 96% of the equipment and parts used were
Various investigations by Middle East Oil sourced domestically, adding that by using
& Gas (MEOG) learnt that political alliances domestic contractors, the developers had saved
between Iran and Iraq had allowed the former to more than $606mn.
act as a conduit for Iranian oil into the interna- Progress is also being made at associated
tional markets in order to help it circumvent the export facilities, with head of the Jask Oil Termi-
US’s re-imposed sanctions, just as it did under nal Project Vahid Maleki saying that work had
the previous longstanding sanctions regime. begun to install a 2.5km pipeline pipe that will
Trucks moved oil between the two countries, feed the first single-point mooring (SPM), an
beginning at around 15,000 bpd, and ramping integral element in phase one.
up to at least 60,000 bpd. In theory, these trucks When complete, the offshore facilities will
move from the Kirkuk region across the border comprise two 6-km pipelines each with a diam-
into Iran’s Ilam province for use in its Kerman- eter of 36-inches (914mm) in addition to the
shah, Shazand, Tehran and Tabriz refineries, SPM. The terminal which is being developed by
whilst Iran in turn delivers an identical amount Pars Oil and Gas Co. (POGC) at a cost of around
of the same quality to Basra, whereupon it is $315mn.™
moved to Al Basrah Oil Terminal (ABOT) and/
or Khor Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT),
depending on availability at the time.
However, in reality once delivered to Iraq, it
is impossible for the crude to be traced by inter-
national observers and reports suggest that vol-
umes have been and continue to be blended and
sold as ‘Iraqi crude’.

Goreh-Jask update
In related news, local firm Petroleum

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 04 27•January•2021