The bad news for Iran’s oil sector continues, as Japan’s crude imports from the country in May fell by over 46% over 2011, and South Korea moves to stop import altogether after EU sanctions are implemented on 1 July.
Reuters reports that Japan’s customs-cleared crude imports from Iran fell 46.5% in May from a year earlier to 523,233 kilolitres (106,162 barrels per day), citing Ministry of Finance data. On a month-on-month basis, May crude imports from Iran fell 7.4 percent from April’s 564,962 kl (118,450 bpd).
Japan has been dealing with the impending sanctions at a difficult time. The shutdown of nuclear power stations across the country in reaction to the Fukushima disaster has left the country much more reliant on oil and gas imports for power generation.
Japan’s parliament approved a bill providing $7.6 billion of state guarantees for shipments of oil from Iran to cover insurance to be axed by the European insurers.
South Korea said Tuesday that it would suspend all Iranian oil imports from the start of July in response to a European Union insurance ban on tankers carrying crude from Iran.
The Iranian ambassador to Seoul, Ahmad Masumifar, responded by saying in an interview with the Yonhap news agency that Tehran “may decide to fully stop importing Korean goods,” reports Iran’s Mehr news agency.
NIOC official Mohammad Ali Emadi has admitted that the country’s oil exports are off between 20 and 30%. “We gradually started to reduce, It is not because of the sanctions but sometime regarding overhaul maintenance of the wells,” Emadi told Reuters.
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