A global oil surplus is allowing the United States to accelerate its plan of bringing Iranian crude exports to zero, a US State Department official claimed on Wednesday.

Iran Press/America: Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative on Iran, said at the CERAWeek energy conference that the sanctions have denied Iran roughly $10 billion in revenue since 2017, removing about 1.5 million barrels per day of Iranian oil from global markets.

President Donald Trump “has made it very clear that we need to have a campaign of maximum economic pressure” on Iran, Hook said, “But he also doesn’t want to shock oil markets, he wants to ensure a stable and well-supplied oil market. That policy has not changed,” Reuters reported.

On May 2018, the US President Donald Trump withdrew from 2015 multilateral nuclear agreementJoint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and re-imposed the sanctions that had been lifted under the accord.

The global oil market is looking for signs that Washington may extend sanctions waivers for Iran’s key customers in early May. The United States surprised global oil markets in November last year by allowing eight countries to keep importing Iranian oil.

Washington reinstated a series of unilateral sanctions against Iran in early August and re-impose a second batch in November. Donald Trump has said the goal of sanctions is to reduce Iran's oil exports to zero.

According to experts, the US can't completely remove all of Iran's oil exports from the market because that would trigger a politically unpalatable increase in oil prices. 101/211/202

 

Read More:

US fails to bring Iran's oil exports down to zero: Speaker Larijani