One million barrels of oil was on offer at a base price of $56.24 in cargoes of in cargos of 35,000 barrels. Buyers was required to buy at least one cargo and other conditions were the same as the previous round.
Ali Hosseini, managing director of IRENEX told Fars News Agency that "because of discrepancy" between buyers' demands and conditions put up by the National Iranian Oil Company, the oil offering did not produce the desired results.
Some traders demanded that letters of credit be accepted instead of bank guarantees but that was not in the official notice, Financial Tribune quoted him as saying.
The third round of crude offer ended without any trade last week. Trading in the latest round underwent some procedural change put in place largely to meet the purchasing conditions for buyers.
It involved settling payments entirely in rials as well as foreign currencies. Exchange rates are calculated based on those reported by SANA (a system operating under the supervision of central bank that records average exchange rates from across the exchange bureaux).
This is while payment in the first and second rounds had to be settled 20% in rials and the rest in foreign currencies, namely USD, euro and the UAE dirham.
The Supreme Council of Economic Coordination – a special body comprising heads of the three branches government – agreed in December to the total settlement in rials for crude oil sales via IRENEX.
Also, the settlement period in the third round was extended up to 90 days from 60 in the previous rounds. Additionally, the pre-payment required for customers to enter the market was reduced from 10% in the past to 6% in the third -- an incentive that was expected to attract buyers.
In the first round last October, one million barrels were offered in the market but only 280,000 barrels sold at $74.85 a barrel. In the second offer in November sales increased to 700,000 barrels at $64.97 per barrel.