South African politicians have talked all around the issue in recent weeks. As in India, many do not want to appear to be kowtowing to the Americans, while others say relations with the United States are far more important than relations with Iran.
Politicians have variously said that South Africa will halt purchases from Iran eventually, might halt them, has already halted them, will never halt them and hasn’t started thinking about the issue.
The bottom line, of course, is that the government doesn’t buy crude oil, private companies do.
And the trade figures for January, published Tuesday, show no oil imports from Iran but sharply higher imports from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
That is a dramatically swift shift given that last year South African oil importers bought a quarter of their oil from Iran or an average of 98,000 barrels day, about 4 percent of Iran’s crude exports.
South Africa’s biggest oil importer, Engen, had not commented as of press deadline. Sasol, which last year bought 12,000 barrels a day from Iran, confirmed that it had dropped Iran as an oil supplier.