TEHRAN- Iran has the capacity to swap 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil with the Caspian Sea littoral states, IRNA reported on Friday quoting Seyed Hamid Hosseini, the director for north part of the country in the Iranian Oil Pipelines and Telecommunication Company (IOPTC), as saying.

Iran's oil swap in the Caspian Sea has resumed following a roughly seven-year suspension, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) reported on its website on August 12.

Under the swap deals, Iran accepts oil from other Caspian Sea littoral states and it delivers the same amount and quality of crude to its southern oil terminals in the Persian Gulf region for delivery to international customers of Caspian oil suppliers.

Several oil tankers have been offloaded at Neka port on Iran's shore of the Caspian Sea. The swap consignments will gradually increase in volume, the report said.

Neka received two batches of Turkmen oil this month, Hellenic Shipping News reported on Thursday.

The swap arrangement was halted during the tenure of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as authorities questioned its economic merits, according to Press TV.

Their successors, however, decided in 2016 to resume the scheme with Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan – all among the littoral states of the Caspian Sea.

Yet, the plan has got into a slow start, with NIOC repairing and renovating the storage and terminal facilities in Neka.

The average daily swap was 90,000 bpd in 2009, which Iran planned to raise to 300,000 bpd by 2015. Iran also charged the partners with a transit fee which totaled $880 million between 1997 and 2009, according to the local media.  

MA