The Egyptian administration has issued the permit for Iran’s giant oil tankers to use the pipeline they operate en route to Europe.
Given the permit, Saudi Arabia’s efforts and plans to set restrictions on Iran’s crude exports to Europe will fail as Iranian tankers are now able to exploit the SuMed pipeline to transfer some of their oil, thus lightening their loads for passage through the canal.
Accordingly, Iranian oil tankers exporting crude to European countries via Suez Canal have been allowed to take advantage of Egypt’s SuMed pipeline since April 02.
In the current circumstances, Iran exports a daily average of 500 thousand barrels of crude oil to European markets while the new permit would allow Iranian tankers to conduct oil shipments which had been halted since August 2012.
Nasrollah Sardashti, Commercial Director of the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) had said earlier “the first Iranian tanker has moored at an African port following the removal of sanctions.”
Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. owns 50 percent of SuMed, which connects the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. State-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco, owns 15 percent of the link; International Petroleum Investment Co. of the United Arab Emirates, 15 percent; three Kuwaiti companies, 15 percent; and Qatar Petroleum, 5 percent, according to SuMed’s official website.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s former Minister of Petroleum Tareq el Molla had emphasized prior to sanctions removal that “it is predicted that oil flow in the SuMed pipeline will rise after the return of Iran to the world market, an idea which Cairo will embrace.”
The SuMed pipeline (also known as Suez-Mediterranean pipeline) is an oil pipeline in Egypt, running from the Ain Sukhna terminal on the Gulf of Suez to offshore Sidi Kerir, Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea. It provides an alternative to the Suez Canal for transporting oil from the Persian Gulf region to the Mediterranean.
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