TEHRAN- National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has announced that the first offering of crude oil at Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX) based on the new instructions will be done in the coming days, Shana reported.

The new instructions offer some incentives including significant discounts for a planned sell-off of crude and condensates.

An NIOC agent said on Wednesday that the company will start offering price discounts and other favorable conditions to those buying oil and gas condensate, a very light type of oil, at IRENEX, Press TV reported.

Amir Hossein Tebyanian said the new discounts, which will come into effect in an upcoming trade at IRENEX in the next few days, would set the initial price for each barrel of condensate at $6 lower than the free-on-board (FOB) price in DME market in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

Tebyanian also said that issue prices for NIOC’s light crude and heavy crude in the upcoming sell-off would be $7 and $8.5 lower than the Brent benchmark for FOB delivery.

The agent said the NIOC hopes the new pricing scheme and other offers would help the company to sell around six million barrels of oil and gas condensate at the IRENEX each month.

Other favorable conditions offered to by the NIOC include removing qualification requirements for the buyers, lowering the amount of prepayment to six percent from 10 percent of the value of the cargoes, and extending the payment clearance time to 60 days from the current 50-day period.

On November 18, Iranian Oil Ministry released a statement in which new regulations and procedures for offering oil and gas condensate at Iran Energy Exchange were listed.

After several unsuccessful offerings of light crude oil, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) had been halting the crude oil and gas condensate offerings at IRENEX, announcing a decision for revising the regulations pertain to the offering of oil at this stock market once again.

It was the second time that the oil ministry was revising the terms of crude oil and condensate offerings at IRENEX.

First in May, NIOC decided to halt the offering of oil and gas condensate at IRENEX to prepare new guidelines for the later offerings. 

IRENEX, once an ordinary local market for energy commodities, has turned into a successful tool for bypassing the American sanctions imposed on Iran’s oil industry.

Major Iranian oil refineries have sold large cargoes of gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to foreign customers since trade for such products started in the local bourse in the early summer.

MA/MA