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All tagged energy
◢ Iran has discovered a new oil field containing 53 billion barrels of crude, President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday, a find that would increase Iran's proven reserves by over a third. The 80-meter deep field stretches nearly 200 kilometres from Khuzestan's border with Iraq to the city of Omidiyeh.
◢ Iran's oil minister said Sunday that China's CNPC has withdrawn from the development of an offshore gas field and that state-owned Petropars will take over the entire project. The South Pars gas field was to be developed jointly by France's Total, China National Petroleum Corporation and Petropars under a $4.8-billion deal signed in July 2017.
◢ Iran is about to burn a lot more fuel oil as a result of U.S. sanctions and new global shipping rules, reversing the nation’s progress in switching to cleaner-burning natural gas. Power plants and other industrial facilities will burn more than 200,000 barrels a day of highly polluting fuel oil next year, double the amount Iran used in 2018.
◢ Reports alleging that fuel tankers appeared to breach U.S. sanctions against Iran were cited in court filings by a bank as it sought to seize the ships, accusing the owners of loan default. The accusations, which led to the the temporary arrest of the vessels in Singapore late last month, come as the U.S. seeks to isolate the regime in Tehran by cutting off oil sales, a major source of revenue.
◢ Saudi Arabia ramped up oil production last month by the most this year, largely filling the gap created by tougher U.S. sanctions on its political rival, Iran. Iranian output plunged in May to the lowest since 1990 as the Trump administration threatened sanctions, according to a Bloomberg survey of officials, analysts and ship-tracking data.
◢ India has ended all imports of oil from Iran, its ambassador in Washington said Wednesday, becoming the latest country to grudgingly comply with threatened US sanctions. India had already sharply decreased its imports from Iran and bought one million tons of crude in April, the last month before Washington stepped up its pressure campaign against Tehran and ended all exemptions to oil sanctions.
◢ The United States said Monday it would start imposing sanctions on friends such as India that buy Iranian oil, in its latest aggressive step to counter Tehran that could jeopardize US relationships. The announcement sent global crude prices spiraling higher, although President Donald Trump tweeted that Saudi Arabia and other US allies would"more than make up" for decreases in Iranian oil.
◢ The OPEC+ group could easily extend its agreement on oil-production cuts, according to Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh. Iran is exempt from oil-output cuts following U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to re-impose sanctions on the country last year.
◢ President Donald Trump’s national security team is deeply divided over whether to let a small group of countries keep buying Iranian oil after a U.S. deadline on sanctions waivers expires in May. Now that fight is getting ugly. The division—primarily between John Bolton’s National Security Council and Michael Pompeo’s State Department—has led to rising frustration and flared tempers.
◢ The United States is extending a waiver to let energy-hungry Iraq keep buying power from Iran, despite Washington's campaign of sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran, an official said. "While this waiver is intended to help Iraq mitigate energy shortages, we continue to discuss our Iran-related sanctions with our partners in Iraq," a State Department official said.
◢ US officials said the global oil market can withstand the removal of all Iranian crude exports this year, a conclusion that could be pivotal in the coming weeks as President Donald Trump weighs whether to end sanctions waivers granted to several nations. The message from American officials comes as OPEC and its allies prepare for a ministerial meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan.
◢ Uncertainty over U.S. waivers for buyers of Iranian oil is starting to grip the market again, under very different circumstances than when American sanctions were set to go into effect last year. The Trump administration, for its part, says the aim is still to completely halt Iran’s oil shipments as it seeks to increase economic pressure on Tehran.
◢ A state visit by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Iran has resulted in an agreement between the two countries to cooperate on the potential transiting of Iranian gas through Armenia to Georgia. The possible export of Iranian gas to Georgia was first raised in 2016 with the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) making successive claims of a deal with both the Georgian state and an unnamed private sector company.
◢ Syria and Iran signed 11 agreements and memoranda of understanding late Monday, including a "long-term strategic economic cooperation" deal aimed at strengthening cooperation between Damascus and one of its key allies in the civil war that has torn the country apart. The agreements covered a range of fields including economy, culture, education, infrastructure, investment and housing, the official Sana news agency reported.
◢ The resumption of wide-ranging American sanctions on Iran promises economic uncertainty for the Islamic Republic’s neighbors in the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. All three have to various extents relied on Iran for natural gas, and stand to be affected—if only by uncertainty until the exact scope of the sanctions becomes clearer.
