September 20-2013
Iranian oil exports continued at below 1 million barrels a day last month, according to the Paris-based International Energy Administration.
The IEA said seven countries bought Iranian crude last month. Those are the usual five—Japan, South Korea, China, India and Turkey—plus small quantities delivered to the UAE and Syria.
August deliveries came to 985,000 barrels a day. That is an IEA estimate subject to revision next month when more precise delivery data will be available. And the revision could be large. For example, last month, the IEA estimated Iran’s July deliveries at 1,160,000 barrels a day. But this month that was revised downward 22 percent to just 900,000.
For the last five months, which is roughly equivalent to the Iranian government’s fiscal year, Iranian crude exports have averaged 986,000 barrels a day, which is more than 60 percent below the 2.5 million barrels a day that Iran averaged in the previous two decades.
Offsetting that somewhat is the fact that the price of oil is now quite high, well more than double what it was under President Khatami.
On the other hand, Iran is unable to get its hands on much of that revenue because banking restrictions are blocking payments to Iran.
The bottom line is that the economy is under severe pressure. The Rohani Administration last week announced that the economy contracted 5.4 percent in the last Persian year, making it the third worst economy in the world after South Sudan (-53.0 percent) and Greece (-6.4 pecent).
