The build-up of crude oil in Iran’s storage tanks shows an increase of the amount of Iranian oil which left without buyer due to the international US sanctions, Kpler, a tanker tracking firm reported.
According to the information, “the stockpile of Iranian oil tankers offshores have dramatically increased in July.”
Iran’s stockpiled oil has reportedly reached 56 million barrels on stationary oil tankers around the Gulf.
Besides offshore stockpiles, the Kpler figures show that Iran is keeping nearly 55.5 million barrels of its unsold oil onshore; either in domestic storage facilities or in storage facilities in China.
In July alone, Iran stored 3 million barrels of oil in China’s Jinzhou storage facilities.
Kpler claims that Iran has no more stationary tankers for storing its oil, but it still has capacity to store oil onshore.
The details of Kpler’s statistics show that the Iran’s ability to transit oil to international markets has dropped from nearly 2.8 bpd in May 2018, when U.S. withdrew from Iran’s deal, to 417.000 in July 2019.
Iran’s unsold stockpiled oil both in offshore and onshore storage facilities has increased from 42 million barrels in May 2018, to 111 million barrels in July 2019.
China’s formal data shows that the country had been able to import 208.000 bpd from Iran this month. But a large amount of it is in return of the expansion of Azadegan and Yadavaran oil fields. According to the contracts Iran committed to pay Chines with oil instead of money.
According to Kpler figures, last month, 174.000 bpd of Iran’s oiled arrived in Chinese ports but the number increased to 360.000 bpd for July.
The same report revealed that in June, Turkey had imported 34000 bpd, but the number increased to 174.000 bpd in July.
Recently Politico reported that U.S. has granted waivers to Chinese Sinopeck and CNPC oil companies to import oil from Iran, but there has been no explanation regarding the import of oil by Turkey. Turkey has stated several times that it is unable to replace Iran’s specific type of oil with other producers.
