{"id":9567,"date":"2012-04-02T15:47:32","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T13:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/04\/s-africa-iranian-oil-imports-soar-in-feb\/"},"modified":"2012-04-02T15:47:32","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T13:47:32","slug":"s-africa-iranian-oil-imports-soar-in-feb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/s-africa-iranian-oil-imports-soar-in-feb\/","title":{"rendered":"S.Africa Iranian oil imports soar in Feb"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG, April 2<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; South African crude oil<br \/>\nimports from Iran leapt in February to $364 million from zero<br \/>\nthe preceding month, customs data showed on Monday, dashing the<br \/>\nview that Pretoria has bowed to U.S. pressure to curb commercial<br \/>\nlinks with Tehran.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Revenue Service said Africa&#8217;s biggest economy imported<br \/>\n417,000 tonnes of Iranian crude in February, a dramatic reversal<br \/>\nof a declining trend seen since October, when it imported<br \/>\n467,000 tonnes.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>South Africa has come under Western pressure to cut Iranian<br \/>\ncrude imports as part of sanctions designed to halt Tehran&#8217;s<br \/>\nsuspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, although it has been<br \/>\nunclear how diplomatically non-aligned Pretoria is responding.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Senior energy and foreign ministry officials directly<br \/>\ncontradicted each other last month as to the status of Iranian<br \/>\nimports.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>However, January trade and customs data showed Iranian crude<br \/>\nimports at zero compared with a monthly average of $280 million<br \/>\nlast year.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Iran has been South Africa&#8217;s biggest crude supplier,<br \/>\naccounting for a quarter of its oil imports.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The biggest South African buyer of Iranian crude is Engen,<br \/>\nmajority-owned by Malaysian national oil company Petronas<br \/>\n. Engen has not commented, but a Petronas source told<br \/>\nReuters last month Engen had stopped buying Iranian oil from<br \/>\nMarch.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Petrochemicals group Sasol, which took 12,000<br \/>\nbarrels of Iranian oil a day, says its has already found new<br \/>\nsuppliers but has not named them.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In January, trade figures showed a spike in imports from<br \/>\nSaudi Arabia, Qatar and Ecuador, suggesting they were being used<br \/>\nas alternative suppliers to Iran.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In February, Saudi Arabia was South Africa&#8217;s biggest<br \/>\nsupplier, with 582,000 tonnes of crude, followed by Iran,<br \/>\nNigeria, Angola an Ecuador.<br \/>\n($1 = 7.6745 South African rand)\t<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Ed Cropley, editing by Ed Stoddard)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG, April 2 (Reuters) &#8211; South African crude oil imports from Iran leapt in February to $364 million from zero the preceding month, customs data showed on Monday, dashing the view that Pretoria has bowed to U.S. pressure to curb commercial links with Tehran. The Revenue Service said Africa&#8217;s biggest economy imported 417,000 tonnes of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-9567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}