Iran to increase oil swaps with Caspian Sea countries

Managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said Iran intends to boost the volume of its oil swaps with Caspian Sea countries to 200,000 bpd by the end of the current Iranian year (March 20, 2012).
Ahmad Qale'bani said that bartering oil is high on the agenda of NIOC, adding that the company is in talks with Central Asian countries to increase the volume of its oil swaps, which currently stands at 25,000 bpd.

New contracts on oil bartering will be finalized soon, he was quoted as saying.
In August, the director of the international affairs department of the National Iranian Oil Company, Mohsen Qamsari, said that Iran resumed oil swaps with Caspian Sea countries after a hiatus of nearly five months. Under the oil swap arrangements, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan each provide Iran with some crude oil, then Iran sells an equal amount of its own crude in the Persian Gulf for those countries.

One of the benefits for Iran to swap Caspian Sea oil is that it does not have to build more pipelines to bring crude from the southern oil fields to northern Iran.
Last summer, an average of 90,000 bpd was swapped through Iran.