Iran seeking to boost oil swaps with neighbors

Iran hopes to sign new deals with its Northern neighbors to boost swap volumes from current levels of around 25,000 barrels per day.Iran is in talks to increase oil swap deals with its northern neighbors, oil ministry website Shana quoted the director of state oil company NIOC as saying over the weekend. National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Managing-Director Ahmad Qalebani said Iran hopes to sign new deals to boost swap volumes from current levels of around 25,000 bpd. Shana reported NIOC international affairs director Seyed Mohsen Qamsar as saying Iran imported around 500,000 barrels of oil from Northern neighboring countries from June 22 to Aug. 22, or around 8,300 bpd, into the Caspian Sea port of Neka. Once the volume of oil imported from other countries around the Caspian reaches 1 million barrels, the same quantity of crude will be exported from Iranian terminals in the Persian Gulf, he told Shana in mid September. Iran has boosted import capacity at Neka to allow greater crude imports from Russia and Azerbaijan and facilitate swaps with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Under the swap deals, Iran consumes the oil imported into Neka and then exports an equivalent amount from the Persian Gulf, giving Central Asian producers better access to oil-hungry Asian markets. Meantime, Iran exported 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan from March 21 until late September, an executive from the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said, or about 25 million cubic meters a day. Iran resumed natural gas exports to Turkey on Friday after an eight-day stoppage due to technical problems, NIGC said on Saturday.