22-03-07

Iran is asking more clients to pay for oil in currencies other than the dollar and 60 % or more of its crude income is in other units, an official said.
Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, international affairs director of state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), told almost all of Iran’s European clients and some of its Asian customers had accepted making payments in non-dollar currencies.

He said Iran, which has pushed for payment in euros and other currencies since quite some time, was concerned about the weak state of the greenback and not being prompted by politics.
“To the best of my knowledge, what we are doing at NIOC is purely something based on commercial reasons,” he said. “Part (of this) has to do with the strength of the dollar.” Ghanimifard had said in December that about 57 % of Iran’s income from crude exports was in euros.

Washington is leading efforts to isolate Iran over what it says is Teheran’s bid to build atomic bombs. The United States has imposed sanctions on twobig state banks and has urged international firms to avoid doing business with Iran. Iran, the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter, insists its nuclear plans are aimed at producing electricity so that it can conserve its oil and gas resources for export, and also to prepare for the day when its huge energy reserves run out.
“We have asked our clients that whenever they are ready to exchange the dollar into any other currency, including the euro, we would be welcoming that. In Europe, almost -- I can say -- all have accepted, in Asian markets some,” he said.

Asked how much of Iran’s oil income was now being paid in currencies other than the dollar, he said: “It would be something close to 60 to 60 something percent.” But he said payments were still based on dollar pricing.
“Pricing as you know is based on the quotations that we get from the international market and when the international market quotes anything for crude or for the products all of them are for the dollar,” Ghanimifard said.

Iran’scentral bank told in February that Teheran had started pushing for a shift out of dollar oil payments after the United States imposed sanctions on Bank Saderat in September. Washington later imposed sanctions on a second bank. The central bank said the shift in payments had hastened the decline in the dollar portion of Iran’s foreign reserves, which account for less than 30 %.
Iran is expected to earn more than Euro 38 bn from its energy exports in the Iranian year that ended on March 20.