December 25 2020
The Islamic Republic is managing to export more oil, though there is a wide range in the estimates depending on who is doing the estimating. This chart shows the monthly exports of both crude oil and condensates for the last two years, as calculated by TankerTrackers, a US-based group that uses satellite data. It shows exports have definitely improved this year from a low of 500,000 barrels a day in the worst four previous months to a high of 1.2 million in September. The average for the last nine months of 2019 (after the sanctions took hold) was about 570,000 barrels a day. The average for this year (through November) was 910,000 barrels. But TankerTrackers tends to produce the highest estimates. For November, TankerTrackers put exports at 1 million barrels a day, while SVB International estimated them at only 585,000 and Petro-Logistics at 447,000. Each said exports had more than doubled since February 2020.
