Exports have shrunk from over 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) since the United States withdrew from a nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions in May 2018. Still, Iran has been working to get around the measures and keep exports flowing.
Data from TankerTrackers and two other firms, asked not to be named, indicated exports are rising in September again, although the figures fall into a wide range of between 400,000 bpd and 1.5 million bpd, reflecting the difficulty in tracking the shipments, Reuters news agency reported.
"Exports are way up right now. We are seeing close to 1.5 million bpd in both crude and condensate so far this month," Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers, told Reuters. "These are levels we haven't seen in a year and a half."
In October 2018, when the sanctions were reimposed, initial estimates of Iran's crude exports also varied by more than 1 million bpd as ships became harder to locate.
According to TankerTrackers, Iran’s oil exports in September 2020 has reached twofold than the exports volume in August, the rate of which accounted for 11 percent of gas condensate share.
TankerTrackers had put the volume of Iran’s oil exports in August 2020 between 350,000 and 750,000 barrels per day (bpd).
Half of Iran’s oil exports has been shipped by vessel to foreign tankers which has made tracking difficult.
MA/PR