The routes of Iranian oil exports have for several weeks been the subject of announcements, threats, requests, proposals, deadlines, measures that have already been decided or are just to be heralded to verify the effect. It is in this tangle of moves and countermoves that we can read the statement read yesterday on the website of Tehran's oil ministry: "Iran will give its crude oil to new customers and no longer to French and British companies".
The threat of bringing forward the European embargo, which will only come into effect at the beginning of July, would therefore seem to be taking shape. A way to alarm the European Union and perhaps also to present itself with a stronger position in the event of a resumption of negotiations on the nuclear ambitions of the Ahmadinejad government and on the heavy sanctions adopted in particular by Europe and the United States.
However, the method chosen is more a test of weakness than strength: according to data from the US Department of Energy, in the first half of 2011 Iran exported 18% of its crude oil to the EU, about 452 barrels a day. Of these, only 49 came to French companies and just over 20 to English groups. To major buyers, such as Italy and Spain, there were only threats last week of an early suspension of shipments. And many have interpreted them as a means of negotiating not a blockade, but an extension of supply contracts. Because if it is true that Iranian oil is an important resource for the refineries of southern Europe, it is also true that countries like Italy are excellent customers for Iranian crude oil.
What will be the next moves, it is not known. However, the markets have been on the defensive for several days: Brent in London closed on Thursday evening at levels above 120 dollars a barrel, the highest since last June, and on Friday WTI in New York stood at 103,24 dollars , the record of the last nine months. Quotations that certainly do not lend a hand to European hopes of a rapid recovery of the economy.
