NCRI – The quantity of crude oil exported by Iran from March 2009 to February 2010 decreased 24.3 percent, according to published reports. The deputy of the Iranian regime’s presidency’s planning office has also said that oil export has been halved during the past 30 years.
According to reports published by the state-run Fars news agency, oil exports, petrochemical products, natural gas and liquefied gas exported by Iran in this time period have decreased 24.3 percent to 59 billion 555 million dollars. The year prior to that, the oil revenues had reached 78 billion 658 million dollars.
The said report indicates that the value of non-oil exports reached 19 billion dollars in this period showing a 12.7 percent increase compared to the year prior.
The state-run Fars news agency did not point to the reasons behind the reduction of oil revenues, but it appears that growing international sanctions against the oil and gas sector have prevented new investments in this critical part of the Iranian economy.
In May, Financial Times reported that the production of oil in Iran has lessened by about 300,000 barrels per day as a result of economic sanctions and lack of investment .
The Iranian regime has been grappling with unilateral oil sanctions by the US since the early 1990s, and later faced UN Security Council resolutions which made it harder to invest in the country’s oil and gas sector.
The seriousness of these sanctions, coupled with the aftershocks of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war was such that according to the mullahs’ presidents’ deputy, oil exports by Iran have shown a 50 percent slump in the last 30 years, going from 4.565 million to 2.357 million barrels per day.
Growing domestic demand for oil has also contributed to lower exports.
According to the report by the mullahs’ presidents’ deputy for planning and strategic supervision, which was published by the state-run ILNA, while in 1979 only 585 thousand barrels per day were used domestically, in 2008, 1.659 million were used.
Iran is the second-largest exporter of oil and an OPEC member, while also having the second-largest gas reserves in the world. Oil export accounts for 80 percent of Iran’s revenues.
Suspension of oil swap
The director of the National Oil Company has said that high swap costs of oil with countries neighboring the Caspian Sea have led to the suspension of the practice “as there are no longer benefits for the country.”
The regime swapped oil with countries like Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan for the past 13 years but contracts with four foreign countries have not been renewed.
The practice has been suspended even as, according to Mehr news agency, the mullahs’ president has asked for an increase 300,000 barrels per day. In the past year this number reached 90,000 barrels per day.
