Zangeneh: Trump exit not to impact Iran’s oil industry

Iran says its oil industry is in a far better shape than before and can withstand the sanctions that the US plans to impose on it. 

Iran’s Petroleum Minister Bijan Zangeneh said threatening Iran with sanctions against its oil industry was an issue of the past, stressing that the country had already been able to safeguard itself against such threats over the past few years.

Zangeneh was referring to an earlier announcement by US President Donald Trump that he would take America out of a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and move toward re-imposing what he described a series of strong sanctions against the country.

They would include a ban over purchasing oil from Iran as well as restrictions over investments in the country’s energy sector.

The nuclear agreement – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the JCPOA – envisaged removing sanctions against Iran in return for certain steps by the country to restrict certain aspects of its nuclear energy activities.

Over the past few years, Trump criticized the former administration of president Barack Obama for sealing the JCPOA with Iran – what he constantly described as a flawed deal.

On Tuesday, he signed a memo that triggered proceedings to take his country out of an agreement that America had signed with Iran together with its European allies – Britain, Germany and France – as well as Russia and China.

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“I believe America’s withdrawal from the JCPOA would lead to no significant development with regards to Iran’s exports of oil and condensate,” Zangeneh told Iran’s national TV on Thursday evening.

“Iran’s foreign currency revenues would be maintained as envisaged in the national budget bill.”

He said the US in the past would occasionally threaten Iran with different sanctions including those concerning its gasoline imports. “Those threats have joined history now,” the veteran minister emphasized in his interview.

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Analysts say they expect world’s biggest buyers to find a way to skirt the sanctions that are to be imposed by the US against purchases of oil from Iran over the next months.

“Iran is doing really well in the area of gasoline even though consumption is increasing by around 9 percent each year,” Zangeneh said.

“They cannot put us under pressure through this (sanctioning gasoline imports).”

He said Iran was already producing about 88 million liters of gasoline per day, adding that an extra capacity of above 20 million liters per day would be materialized before March 2019.

Zangeneh also emphasized that Iran had been able to increase its natural gas production by 150 million cubic meters per day over the past year, adding that an extra 240 million cubic meters per day would be materialized before March 2019.