Crude imports to several countries will likely reach the quantities from before July 1.
At the start of July, the European Union made insurance news when it banned coverage on all tankers shipping oil from Iran, but over the last few months, that Middle Eastern country has recovered its shipments to its top Asian buyers, successfully enough that it may return to the levels that it saw before the sanctions went into place.
In July, oil exports from Iran plummeted when other countries couldn’t find the coverage they needed.
This led the country to experience a level of uncertainty in its oil shipments that it had not seen in decades. However, its top buyers in Asia have been slowly returning to the insurance news scene by either creating their own coverage or purchasing that available from Iran, itself. These Asian countries include South Korea, India, and Japan.
The latest insurance news now suggests that Iran’s efforts around the E.U. embargo are increasingly successful.
It looks as though by September, it will be seeing levels in its Asian shipments that are pretty much back to normal, and that insurance news will continue to report this for the remainder of the year. Refiners that are seeking to continue using crude from Iran have been making the necessary changes to their processes, as these changes will require new grades to be tested and may lead to an output alteration.
According to Wood Mackenzie energy consultant, Sushant Gupta, “Iran was part of the staple diet”. Gupta explained that “The refiners would want to keep their crude slate intact if they can as long as the economics works. We do see a recovery in Iranian crude imports into Asia in the fourth quarter.”
In the West, the European Union, the United States, and other countries are working to use efforts such as the bans making insurance news, in order to halt Iran’s nuclear program, which many western countries suspect to be a part of a pursuit of nuclear weapons. By using the sanctions, these countries are cutting the sales of crude oil, which are a central part of Iran’s income.
Tehran has spoken out against the insurance news from the West, saying that its nuclear program is an entirely peaceful one.
