Iran asking oil clients not to pay in dollar

Iran, embroiled in a nuclear row with Washington, is asking more clients to pay for oil in currencies other than the dollar and 60 per cent or more of its crude income is in other units, an official said yesterday.

Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, international affairs director of state-owned National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), told Reuters 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 September when Washington slapped sanctions on a big Iranian bank, 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 per cent of Iran’s income from crude exports was in euros.

Gulf Daily News