The country’s leading importers from Asia have reduced their shipments by 18 percent.
The latest insurance news regarding the EU and U.S. embargo on Iranian oil has shown that the top Asian buyers of that country’s crude have cut their imports by approximately 18 percent, reducing the shipments to those nations by over a quarter of a million barrels every day within the year’s first five months.
The American sanctions became effective Thursday and the European Union’s will be on Sunday.
The majority of the exports from Iran are shipments that head to Asia, and on Wednesday, Tehran made its first acknowledgement that it has experienced a sharp drop in its exports of crude. In fact, it has now released that its volumes are up to 30 percent lower than their normal levels, which had previously been 2.2 million barrels every day.
Estimates from the International Energy Agency state that the exports from Tehran have dropped by more than that.
In fact, that agency’s insurance news says that the reductions in the shipments from Iran are likely to be closer to 40 percent since the beginning of 2012. The most recent statistics from the four leading importers of Iranian oil in Asia show that the shipments have dropped by 18 percent, or 257,741 daily barrels, within this year’s first five months.
In fact, in May alone, the shipments to South Korea, India, China, and Japan plummeted by 25 percent, reaching a daily 999,230 barrels, when it had been 1,338,193 barrels per day in May 2011. These calculates were based on the customs data from Asian countries as calculated by Thomson Reuters.
Until now, the imports from those countries has fallen this year from 1,450,622 per day, from having been 1,192,881. When using the prices of today, this means that there is a daily loss of approximately $24 million in Iranian oil earnings.
The sanctions in this insurance news, which are being put into place by the United States and the European Union are a part of an effort to restrict Iran’s income in the belief that the Middle Eastern country is building nuclear weapons, so that it will be pressured to cease. Tehran insists that its nuclear program is meant exclusively for civilian purposes.
