Iran offers discounts of up to $8.5 a barrel for oil sold at local bourse

Press TV - The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) is offering significant discounts for a planned sell-off of crude and condensates in a local energy bourse as the government tries to use the mechanism to bypass the American sanctions imposed on direct oil exports.

An NIOC agent said on Wednesday that the company will start offering price discounts and other favorable conditions to those buying oil and gas condensate, a very light type of oil, at Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX).

Amir Hossein Tebyanian said the new discounts, which will come into effect in an upcoming trade at IRENEX in the next few days, would set the initial price for each barrel of condensate at $6 lower than the free-on-board (FOB) price in DME market in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

Tebyanian also said that issue prices for NIOC�s light crude and heavy crude in the upcoming sell-off would be $7 and $8.5 lower than the Brent benchmark for FOB delivery.

The agent said the NIOC hopes the new pricing scheme and other offers would help the company to sell around six million barrels of oil and gas condensate at the IRENEX each month.

Other favorable conditions offered to by the NIOC include removing qualification requirements for the buyers, lowering the amount of prepayment to six percent from 10 percent of the value of the cargoes, and extending the payment clearance time to 60 days from the current 50-day period.

The NIOC has sold a total of 1.015 million barrels of light crude and 70,000 barrels of heavy crude in 30 rounds of trade at IRENEX since it joined the mechanism last month. There has yet to come any order for the condensates supplied by the company at the export ring of the local market.

IRENEX, once an ordinary local market for energy commodities, has turned into a successful tool for bypassing the American sanctions imposed on Iran�s oil industry.

Major Iranian oil refineries have sold large cargoes of gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to foreign customers since trade for such products started in the local bourse in the early summer.