Bloomberg: US may turn a blind eye to Iran oil sanctions violations to control prices
Bloomberg News reported, citing a senior official at Vitol Group, the world's largest private oil trading company, that the United States may turn a blind eye to Iran's violation of sanctions in order to control global oil prices.
Mike Mueller, head of Asia at Vitol Group, has said that in light of the US midterm elections in November this year, the Joe Biden administration may decide to turn a blind eye to Iranian oil exports to prevent oil prices from rising.
According to him, even without a nuclear deal, Mr. Biden would likely allow Iran to increase its oil exports somewhat.
Mr. Mueller has said that if the nuclear deal is revived, Iran will send 500,000 to 1 million more barrels of oil to the market per day, and on the other hand, Iran has 100 million barrels of oil stored without customers that it could bring to the market sooner: this volume of oil could have a significant impact on controlling global oil prices.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on June 4 that the chances of a nuclear deal had diminished. Last month, the United States seized an Iranian oil shipment that had been seized by Greece.
Mr. Mueller has said that the seizure of Iranian oil shipments is unlikely to continue.
In the first three months of this year (last winter), Iran increased its daily oil exports from 650,000 barrels to 840,000 barrels, but after Western sanctions against the Kremlin due to its military aggression in Ukraine, Russia's significant discount to China, the only official customer of Iranian oil, caused Iranian oil exports to drop to 570,000 barrels per day.
Global oil prices have risen by more than 50 percent this year, reaching around $120, under the influence of Russia's military invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions against the Kremlin.
The rise in gasoline prices in the United States to $4.8 per gallon will also cause American voters to be dissatisfied with Mr. Biden's administration and the Democratic Party.
Currently, both the Democratic and Republican parties want to pressure the Islamic Republic of Iran to return to the JCPOA, but Mr. Mueller says that the upcoming elections in the United States may convince the Biden administration to turn a blind eye to Iran's violation of oil sanctions.
Vitol, which traded 7.6 million barrels of oil and oil products per day last year, says global oil supply is tight and the release of US strategic oil reserves could help control prices to some extent.
Recently, OPEC and allied countries led by Russia agreed to increase their production by nearly 650,000 barrels per month over the next two months; but Mr. Mueller said that given that some OPEC member countries are unable to increase oil production and Russia itself is facing a production reduction, this decision will not have much of an impact on reducing oil prices.
Source: Radio Farda
