TEHRAN: With the visit of South Africa’s Minister of Energy to Tehran, new rounds of talks have started with Iran’s biggest client in Africa.
Concurrent with Iran and the 5+1 group nuclear negotiations and the ever more likelihood of a complete removal of anti-Iranian sanctions in the coming summer, new rounds of oil talks have commenced between Iran and its former clients including South Africa, Sri Lanka, and some Asian refineries such as Pakistan’s.
Tehran-Johannesburg negotiations on oil deals have kicked off today in Tehran between Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh and South African Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Peterson behind closed doors.
Speculations indicate Iran’s crude oil export to South African refineries after the complete lift of sanctions has been the focus of today’s negotiations between the two sides.
Semi-official reports show in 2011, South Africa with importing about 98,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Iran had been the country’s ninth greatest customer after China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, Spain and Greece.
With the US and EU’s increasing international pressure on Iran and various problems in the transfer of foreign exchange from the sale of Iranian oil by foreign banks, Iran’s crude oil export to South Africa had been facing some major difficulties.
A few days ago Bulgaria invited Iran to participate in Nabokov pipeline, where Iran’s ambassador made new proposals to establish a new gas hub to meet the EU gas demand.
Following that, Iran has also officially invited German investors to participate in South Pars development projects and the transfer of gas to Europe.
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