Asians lift more Iran oil but Europe refuses imports

Asian customers of Iranian oil are steady in taking supplies from the country but the Europeans refuse to buy any, despite having received exemptions from US sanctions.

India’s Hindustan Petroleum Corp said Wednesday it plans to buy 0.9 million tonnes of Iranian oil this year.

The company imported 0.7 million tonnes of crude oil from Iran during the financial year between April 2018 and February 2019, director of refineries M K Surana said.

Last month, Indian refiners began clearing their oil debt to Iran under a new payment mechanism which they put in place after the US reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

India is Iran’s second biggest oil customer after China and one of the eight countries which got US waivers late last year to continue crude oil imports from Iran for six months.

China, South Korea and Japan have also started importing oil from Iran but European nations have not responded yet to Tehran’s offers to sell them crude oil despite having US waivers, Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh said Tuesday.

"No European country is buying oil from Iran except Turkey,” he told a news conference in Tehran. "Greece and Italy have been granted exemptions by America, but they don’t buy Iranian oil and they don’t answer our questions.”

PressTV-Iran impossible to sanction, able to sell oil: Veep

Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri believes it is impossible to sanction Iran, a day after saying the country was selling as much oil as it needed despite US sanctions.

Britain, France and Germany last week launched the Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), a system to facilitate non-dollar trade with Iran and avoid US sanctions.

Iranian officials have warned that the country would revise relations with Europe if it did not benefit economically from INSTEX.

Zangeneh described the situation more difficult than the Iraqi war on Iran in the 1980s but said the country is finding creative ways to cope.

The US, he said, wants to zero Iran’s export incomes but Iranian officials are doing their best to neutralize it.

His ministry has already offered oil on the Tehran bourse to bypass sanctions. Zangeneh said Iran now considers selling Islamic bonds to finance $6.2 billion worth of oil projects.

US sanctions have hampered the country’s plans to develop its upstream sector, but they have also left the country to its own devices for development.

Last month, Iran marked a milestone of 100 million liters per day in gasoline production when the third phase of its most important refining project came online, making the country self-sufficient in the fuel.

PressTV-Iran set for ‘big leap’ in gasoline production this week

Iran is to mark a milestone in gasoline production this week when the third phase of its most important refining project comes online, making the country self-sufficient in the fuel.

According to Zangeneh, more than $10 billion of projects are in the pipeline at the giant South Pars field where four gas processing plants will go on stream this winter with a capacity of 110 million cubic meters per day of natural gas.

Oil exports are a key source of revenue for Iran but the country faces umpteen hurdles for its repatriation.

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