Iran Oil Swap Deals Await Renewal

EghtesadOnline: Crude oil and petroleum products’ swap deals have expired and are not extended yet, managing director of the Iranian Oil Pipeline and Telecommunications Company Abbas-Ali Jafari-Nasab said.

News ID: ۷۴۶۵۷۶

29 January 2019

Iran and Iraq in 2017 agreed to send up to 60,000 barrels of crude per day from the Kirkuk Oilfield in Iraq by truck to be refined in a Kermanshah refinery and Iran delivered the same volume at Iraq’s southern ports for export, ISNA reported.

Last year Iran received oil from the Caspian Sea littoral states in the north and delivered the same amount to the southern neighbors via Kharg Oil Terminal in Hormozgan Province.

“Last year and after seven years of interruption in oil swap, 3.3 million barrels of crude oil was imported via the Neka, Sari, Rey swap pipeline for the Tehran refinery. Also based on the Kirkuk oil swap deal, 700,000 tons of oil was delivered,” Jafari-Nasab was quoted as saying by Financial Tribune.

Oil and gas company Dragon Oil, owned by Dubai-based Emirates National Oil Company, shipped an oil cargo from Turkmenistan to Neka Port in northern Iran last August for swapping through the Persian Gulf, marking the first such operation by Iran since 2010.

However, all the contracts ended last year and have not been renewed yet. Negotiations are underway between the Oil Ministry and the foreign partners, the IOPTC boss added.

Regarding the volume of outbound oil and petroleum products, he said, “Currently, an average of 400 million liters of oil and other products are transported daily via pipelines, up 830% over the past 40 years.” An estimated 14,000 kilometers of oil and petroleum pipelines zigzag the country, the country.

IOPTC receives crude oil for delivery to oil refineries prior to providing end users with refined petroleum products.

“Crude and petroleum pipelines in Iran are on average 35 years old. However, this does not mean that these pipelines have not been effective. Today, via rehabilitation projects and using new coating we can enhance the life of the pipelines,” Jafari-Nasab was quoted as saying.