Cash change: has gone smoothly, an NIOC official said
Iran's customers make currency switch
Iran is receiving about 60% or more of its oil income in euros or other currencies, while almost all European and some Asian clients have agreed to pay in currencies other than US dollars, a senior official said today.
Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, international affairs director of state-owned National Iranian Oil Company NIOC), told Reuters the decision to swap trade from US dollars to a mixture of currencies was based on commercial reasons, such as the weak dollar.
He said Iran, which has pushed for payment in euros and other currencies since September when Washington slapped sanctions on a big Iranian bank, was concerned about the weak state of the greenback and not being prompted by politics.
"To the best of my knowledge, what we are doing at NIOC is purely something based on commercial reasons," he said. "Part (of this) has to do with the strength of the dollar."
Ghanimifard had said in December that about 57% of Iran's income from crude exports was in euros.
Washington is leading efforts to isolate Iran over what it says is Tehran's bid to build atomic bombs. The US has imposed sanctions on two big state banks and has urged international companies to avoid doing business with Iran.
Iran, the world's fourth biggest oil exporter, insists its nuclear plans are aimed at producing electricity so that it can conserve its oil and gas resources for export, and also to prepare for the day when its huge energy reserves run out.
"We have asked our clients that whenever they are ready to exchange the dollar into any other currency, including the euro, we would be welcoming that. In Europe, almost - I can say - all have accepted, in Asian markets some," he told Reuters.
Asked how much of Iran's oil income was now being paid in currencies other than the dollar, he said: "It would be something close to 60%."
But he said payments were still based on dollar pricing.
"Pricing as you know is based on the quotations that we get from the international market and when the international market quotes anything for crude or for the products all of them are for the US dollar," Ghanimifard said.
Iran's Central Bank told Reuters in February that Tehran had started pushing for a shift out of dollar oil payments after the US imposed sanctions on Bank Saderat in September. Washington later imposed sanctions on a second bank.
The Central Bank said the shift in payments had hastened the decline in the dollar portion of Iran's foreign reserves, which account for less than 30%.
Iran is expected to earn more than $50 billion from its energy exports in the Iranian year that ended on 20 March.