Iran sold 1.4 million barrels of crude oil a day to importing countries, the highest level over the last three years, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Oil Market Report.
The country, faced with ever more tighter economic sanctions from the West over its nuclear program, pumped 2.85 million barrels a day last month, the report adds.
The rise in crude oil sales comes amid ongoing talks between the Western powers and Tehran over the sanctions and a final deal on lifting them is expected to be reached soon.
IEA believes that Iran is readying for the lifting of sanctions as it has already undertaken certain steps including storing of crude on ships. According to the country’s Deputy Oil Minister Roknoddin Javadi, cited by Bloomberg, Iran had about 10 million barrels sitting in storage on ships in May.
There is however no data available whether May imports included any of this capacity.
Iran has set its sight on export markets in Asia with additional crude sales seeing that so far its biggest buyers were China and India, IEA report said.
On the other hand, OPEC supply edged up 50 kb/d in May to 31.33 mb/d, the highest rate since August 2012.
Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates pumped at record monthly rates to keep output more than 1 mb/d above OPEC’s official supply target for a third month running. Oil ministers agreed to maintain that target at their 5 June meeting.
“The estimate of global demand growth has been revised up to 1.7 mb/d for the first quarter of 2015 and 1.4 mb/d for all of 2015. Momentum is expected to ease somewhat the current quarter, assuming a return to normal weather conditions and given the recent partial recovery in oil prices, ” IEA said.