Iran’s Oil Sales Hit a Record High
WANA (Jan 14) – Iran’s Minister of Oil said that the country’s oil sales over the past 14 months, measured through export loadings, have reached record levels.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting, Mohsen Paknejad said the oil sales process is continuing as before. He explained that details of the mechanisms used to sell oil are not discussed in the media because “there are non-friendly ears outside this land seeking to harm the interests of the Iranian people; they listen as well and try to identify our advantages in oil sales.”
He added: “We hope the day will come when we can explain these processes openly, so that people know how the sales team, with prudence and careful planning, manages to sell oil, and our citizens no longer feel concerned about this issue.”
Paknejad stressed that Iran’s oil sales volumes over the past 14 months, in terms of export shipments, have broken previous records.
Mohsen Paknejad, Iran’s oil minister. Social Media / WANA News Agency
Commenting on potential new restrictions on Iran’s oil exports, he said that neither recent tariff measures nor scenarios such as snapback sanctions or the so-called trigger mechanism would create serious obstacles to Iran’s oil sales. “The sales teams operating in the oil industry are professional,” he noted, “and they have been dealing with such conditions for years. They know very well how to manage and circumvent restrictions.”
In response to a question about efforts by opposition groups abroad to encourage strikes among oil workers, the oil minister said that employees across different sectors of the oil industry stand with the system. He acknowledged that some people face livelihood concerns that should be heard, adding that officials are doing everything possible to help address these problems.
He further said that some of the recent incidents were not protests but acts of unrest. “People do not damage their own property, and they do not kill themselves,” he said. “Those who carried out such acts in the name of protest and injured some citizens are certainly not from among the people. These actions are linked to projects whose roots lie outside the country.”
Paknejad added that the number of people injured within the oil industry was limited. According to reports he has received, a small number of employees who were present at their workplaces were affected when disruptive and destructive elements entered several oil industry facilities.
