TEHRAN – The 10th round of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)’s light crude oil offerings at Iran Energy Exchange (IRENEX) ended on Tuesday with no sales, ILNA reported.

As reported, in this round two million barrels of crude oil was offered at the base price of $67.28, and unlike the previous rounds, this time the least amount of sales was reduced to 1,000 barrels so that the buyers wouldn’t need high banking guarantees and the loadings would also be easier for them.

According to Amir-Hossein Tabianian, the NIOC's representative for offering crude oil and related products at IRENEX, no deals were registered in this round of offering.

After two unsuccessful offerings of light crude oil in the new Iranian calendar year (started on March 21), NIOC held the year’s third round of offerings based on new guidelines which mainly concerned pricing and lowering risks for buyers.

In the previous round, NIOC offered one million barrels of crude oil at the base price of $63.36. 

The least amount of sales was 35,000 barrels for the last nine rounds of offerings.

NIOC offered crude oil at IRENEX first on October 28, 2018 just few days before new U.S. sanctions on Iran’s petroleum sector took effect (November 4). In the first round, NIOC could sell some 280,000 barrels of crude oil at $74.85 per barrel. With the daily supply amount of one million barrels, the market wrapped up by selling eight 35,000-barrel cargos of oil on the day.

Since the U.S.’s withdrew from Iran’s nuclear pact in May 2018, vowing to drive Iran's oil exports down to zero, the Islamic Republic has been taking various measures to counter U.S. actions and to keep its oil exports levels as high as possible.

One of the main strategies that Iran chose to execute to help its oil exports afloat has been trying new ways to diversify the mechanism of oil sales, one of which is offering oil at the country’s stock market.

EF/MA