to report «iusnews»; The Tankers Trackers said in a post on its X account on Sunday that Iran had exported an average of 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil over the past four weeks.
“These are numbers we haven't seen since the early half of 2018,” the post said.
Iran’s oil exports came under sweeping US sanctions in May 2018, when Washington withdrew from a landmark international deal on Iran’s nuclear program, known as the JCPOA.
The sanctions affected Iranian oil shipments when they were tightened in May 2019, but they gradually became ineffective as Iran managed to restore and expand its exports, particularly to private buyers in China.
The Tanker Trackers had already reported a seven-year record in Iran’s oil exports in September when shipments reached nearly 2 million bpd.
That report came just before the United Nations re-imposed six sanction resolutions on Iran that had been lifted in 2015 when the country signed the JCPOA with world powers.
The US and allies in Europe, who triggered the so-called snapback of UN sanctions on Iran, had expected that the sanctions could curb the flow of oil from Iran to major customers like China.
However, experts and authorities in Iran have consistently downplayed concerns raised about the country’s oil exports, arguing that UN sanctions wouldn’t affect Iran’s oil trade or its access to international markets.
Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said in early October that UN sanctions would not add any new pressure on the country’s oil exports as he insisted that the country had overcome some of the harshest American sanctions targeting its oil industry in recent years.
