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RFL/RE – Iran’s oil minister has announced a 50 percent increase in oil exports and a 100 percent collection of oil revenues, but the Supreme Audit Court of Iran says revenue collected from customers in April and May was less than 15 percent.
Meanwhile, in the current annual budget, the government predicted the daily export of 1.4 million barrels of crude oil at a price of $70 per barrel.
That would represent a doubling of exports based on statistics from oil tanker tracking companies, which show that Iran exported an average of 700,000 barrels of oil per day in April and May.
The data company Kepler told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda on June 13 that preliminary estimates showed that Iran’s crude oil and gas condensate loaded in May was about 400,000 barrels per day, compared with 820,000 barrels in April and 908,000 barrels in March.
Iran’s economy has been devastated by years of harsh economic sanctions imposed by Washington after the United States withdrew from a deal with world powers aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program. It is now struggling to circumvent sanctions and sell oil.
Iran’s main oil customer is China, and it incurs costs for circumventing sanctions and providing oil discounts to China. The exact amount of these costs is unknown.
Following Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine in February, Russian state-run oil companies were sanctioned, and Moscow is now seeking new customers. It is scheduled to begin selling its oil to China in August, which will affect Iranian sales.
To compensate for the drop in demand from other markets, Moscow has sought to increase exports to Asia by discounting its crude by about $30 per barrel, which is $10 per barrel more than Iran’s discount to its Asian customers, especially China, according to Reuters.
