TEHRAN - Managing Director of Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX) says nearly 5.7 million tons of oil products have been traded at the IRENEX since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2019).

Some 5,690,074 tons of the mentioned products have been traded at IRENEX since March and the total offerings have been two times more than the figure for the trades, Seyed Ali Hosseini told IRNA.

According to the official, during the mentioned period, every week 500,000 tons of oil products were offered at IRENEX.

Most of the traded products were exported to the neighboring countries, Hosseini said.

“The share of exports was higher than domestic sales so that about 4.6 million tons of the traded products were exported,” he noted.

Since the U.S. withdrew from Iran’s nuclear pact in May 2018, vowing to drive Iran's oil exports down to zero, the Islamic Republic has been taking various measures to counter U.S. actions and to lessen its economy’s reliance on oil.

The country also sought new strategies to help its oil exports afloat, one of which is diversifying the mechanism of oil sales, like offering oil and oil products at the country’s stock market.

In the past few years, Iranian think-tanks and energy experts have been repeatedly stating that the country should increase its refining capacity in order to lessen the economy’s reliance on crude sales. 

In this regard, one of the main strategies of the National Iranian Oil Company in recent years has been focusing on the country’s refineries and offering various oil products at IRENEX in order to increase the exports.

In early August 2019, the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company (NIOPDC) offered 18,000 tons of 95 octane gasoline produced in Iran’s Persian Gulf Star Refinery (PGSR) at IRENEX, of which 5,000 tons were sold to be exported to Afghanistan, Armenia, and Iraqi Kurdistan.

EF/MA