Iran has increased its oil exports every year since Joe Biden's administration took office, and last year it exported an average of 1.55 million barrels of oil.
Shandong Ports Group, one of the largest oil terminals that receives oil from Iran, Russia and Venezuela, has banned the entry of oil tankers that have been sanctioned by the United States, in parallel with the significant decline in Iranian oil exports in the past two months.
Most of Iran's oil is transported to Chinese refineries through this port.
Iran also supplies another part of its oil to the ports of Dalian and Jawshan, to small and independent Chinese refineries, called Teapots, but its volume is much smaller than the oil unloaded in Shandong.
To secretly export oil to China, Iran needs oil tankers called the "ghost fleet" (or "dark fleet") and to deliver its oil to the ports where the automatic identification system should be turned off.
In October and September, the US imposed sanctions on dozens of tankers belonging to the “ghost fleet,” and Iran’s oil exports to China fell to less than 1.3 million barrels in November and December, 550,000 barrels less than in September.
Reuters reported, citing Kepler statistics, that Shandong ports received 1.74 million barrels of Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan oil per day last year, equivalent to 17% of China’s total oil imports.
Now, no tanker on the sanctions list will be able to deliver Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil to Shandong ports.
Reuters has published the names of eight very large oil tankers, each with a capacity of two million barrels, that unloaded their cargoes at Shandong ports last month, most of which were Iranian oil.
In this regard, Homayun Falakshahi, a senior expert at Kepler, told Radio Farda that the most important factor in the fall in Iran’s oil exports in the past two months is the imposition of US sanctions on dozens of “ghost fleet” oil tankers.
He said that since September, unsold oil reserves in Iranian waters have more than doubled to 20 million barrels.
Mr. Falakshahi also stressed that the so-called “teapot” refineries have low efficiency and are highly polluting, and the Chinese government has asked them to renovate or retire.
In recent months, at least three “teapots” have officially declared bankruptcy.
The source of Iran’s declining oil exports is also the fact that Donald Trump, the US president-elect, is set to enter the White House in less than two weeks and is expected to revive the “maximum pressure” policy against Iran.
Sanctions imposed on Iran during his previous term in office reduced daily oil exports from 2.5 million barrels to 350,000 barrels.