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sanctions on oil and petrochemicals could be sanctioned, including Beijing, 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.
Separately, Iranian Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri on July 29 called on China and other countries friendly with Iran to buy more Iranian oil despite the US attempt to erase all oil shipments from the Islamic Republic from world crude export markets, Iranian oil ministry news website SHANA reported. “Even though we are aware that friendly countries such as China are facing some restrictions, we expect them to be more active in buying Iranian oil,” SHANA quoted Jahangiri as telling visiting senior Chinese diplomat Song Tao.
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 given the high costs and complexities of restarting production.
Data from Kayrros, a company which tracks oil flows, reportedly showed onshore storage in Iran was 46.1mn barrels, from a total capacity of 73mn barrels, the highest level recorded since mid January.
Reuters also cited data based on AIS tracking by shipping intelligence platform MarineTraffic. It showed 16 Iranian tankers, holding some 20mn barrels, appeared to have been deployed as floating storage. They had been stationary for between two to four weeks. Ten of those tankers with nearly 11mn barrels had been stationary for four weeks.
This compared with 12 Iranian tankers holding at least 13mn barrels in March, which had been stationary from two to four weeks.
If Iran wants to buy more tankers for storage purposes, it again faces the challenge of overcoming US sanctions.
“Apart from these vessels, of late there is indeed a rising trend of more Iranian tankers switching off their AIS trackers,” Svetlana Lobaciova, a senior market analyst with Gibson, was quoted as saying, adding: “However, at this stage we can not say with any degree of certainty whether these units are simply sitting empty or storing or continuing to trade.”
“Iran has been using storage facilities in China, and could also try using storage facilities in neighboring Oman for example. However, if the US targets such external storage options with sanctions, it will create serious problems and infuriate Iran,” Farzin Nadimi, an associate fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, was cited as saying.
35 IRAN Country Report August 2019 www.intellinews.com