An official with the government of Iran said removing Iranian crude from the global oil market by November is not possible, based on the volume of exports. Irna.ir photo.
2.5 million barrels of Iranian crude, condensate on market daily
On Wednesday, an Iranian official told the country’s semi-official Tasnim news agency that removing Iranian crude from the global market by November is impossible.
Last month, the Trump administration walked away from the Obama-era Iran sanction relief agreement which saw Iran reduce its nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting some sanctions against Tehran.
Following the decision to leave the agreement, President Trump imposed sanctions against Iran which will come into effect in early November.
The Iranian official told Reuters that “Iran exports a total of 2.5 million barrels per day of crude and condensate and eliminating it easily and in a period of a few months is impossible”.
The comments came on Wednesday, one day after the US State Department called on all countries to halt imports of Iranian crude beginning in November.
“We’re going to isolate streams of Iranian funding and looking to highlight the totality of Iran’s malign behaviour across the region”, a senior State Department official told reporters on Tuesday.
According to the US official, the Trump administration is not likely to grant any waivers to the sanctions and is calling for all US allies to import no Iranian crude after the sanctions are implemented on November 4.
The official told reporters that a number of companies were pulling out of Iran, ahead of the sanctions. “I am continually struck by the amount of business that is falling out of Iran. Peugeot and others simply view Iran as too risky a place to do business,” said the official.
In early June, PSA Group, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars, suspended its push into Iran. The automaker joined French energy companies, Total SA and Engie SA, in fleeing the Middle Eastern country in response to Trump’s decision to abandon the 2015 Iran sanction agreement and re-impose crippling sanctions against Tehran.
According to the State Department official, a delegation from the United States will travel to the Middle East next week “to ensure that the global supply of oil is not adversely affected by these sanctions”.
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