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Four tankers seized by the U.S. whereas en path to Venezuela were carrying cargoes of gasoline loaded in Iran, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh stated.
His acknowledgment is the primary public assertion by an Iranian official that the ships were transporting fuel from Iran when the U.S. confiscated them final week. The seizure was an unprecedented step by Washington and will destabilize world oil shipments if Iran retaliates.
“The cargoes were loaded from Iran, but neither the ships nor the cargoes belonged to Iran, and the U.S. declared victory for itself in the middle of this,” Zanganeh stated on Monday at a briefing in Tehran. “The fuel was Iranian, but it had been sold to Venezuela and its payment had been cleared.”
Retaliatory motion by Iran might disrupt vitality markets if Tehran interferes with worldwide oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most crucial choke level for oil shipments. However, the affect on oil costs could also be much less pronounced than what it as soon as might need been given decrease fuel consumption within the face of pandemic-driven lockdowns.
Benchmark Brent crude gained 0.5% and was buying and selling at $45.02 a barrel at 8:31 a.m. in London, down 32% this 12 months.
The tankers were transporting 1.1 million barrels of petroleum, the U.S. Justice Department stated in a press release Friday. It’s not clear the place the ships were on the time of the seizures as a result of that they had all turned off their satellite-tracking programs to keep away from detection between May and July, based on information compiled by Bloomberg.
Iran has been exporting gasoline to fuel-starved Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions which are meant to choke off each nations from oil income. The Justice Department stated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the U.S. designates as a international terrorist group, was behind the cargo.
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