Iranian Official Denies Reports of Discount on Oil
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A senior Iranian oil official denied reports about the country’s decision to offer a special discount on the sales of oil, stressing that the market shapes Iran’s pricing policy.
“The price of Iran’s oil in the new contracts is in accordance with the official (market) prices, and the (news of) discount given to customers is not true,” said Mohsen Qamsari, director general for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
On February 11, Bloomberg claimed it has obtained a price list showing the discount for March sales of Iran’s Heavy crude will widen by 35 cents to sell at $6.40 a barrel less than the regional benchmark for buyers in the Mediterranean region.
That means the Iranian barrels will sell for $1.25 a barrel less than the Saudi crude, the widest discount since June 2014, the report added.
Now that Western sanctions are gone after years, Iran is determined to win back market share in the oil industry after implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a lasting nuclear deal between Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) that took effect in January.
An oil official said Sunday that since the termination of anti-Iran sanctions in January, the country has succeeded in increasing its crude exports by 400,000 barrels per day, getting closer to the intended selling 2 million bpd of oil.