The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) of Iran unveiled this week the second oceangoing oil tanker it has helped to build, to show that the Islamic Republic has managed to build a tanker despite the U.S. sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.
“The ceremony to unveil the oceangoing oil tanker developed by the Iranian experts was a goodbye party for the gambler Trump to make enemies understand that we have been able to unveil and launch the second giant oceangoing oil tanker despite all sanctions with the help of the Iranian experts at Sadra company,” Saeed Mohammad, the head of IRGC-controlled engineering company Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, told reporters at the ceremony to launch the oil tanker in southern Iran on Tuesday.
The IRGC, including its Al Quds Force, was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States last year.
IRGC-affiliated Sadra Company has built the oceangoing oil tanker, an Aframax vessel able to transport up to 750,000 barrels of oil, Mohammad said, as carried by the Fars News Agency.
The oil tanker has been built for delivery to a foreign customer, the official added. The new tanker is the second that IRGC-affiliated firms have built, and the two tankers have earned Iran almost US$146 million (120 million euro) in hard currency revenue, he said.
The official also went on to brag that Iran is capable of building its own tankers without the help of foreign companies.
“We have grown self-sufficient in all sections of the marine industry as a result of efforts of the young Iranian specialists, and today, we do not need foreign states for building any type of ship,” Fars quoted Mohammad as saying.
Earlier this year, the IRGC opened a new naval base in a coastal town along the world’s most important oil chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz, a theater of frequent incidents and frictions between Iran and the United States.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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They neither managed to stop Iran exporting up to 1.5 million barrels a day (mbd) of its crude oil or 71% of its pre-sanction exports nor building its own oil tankers which require a lot of technological skill to accomplish. The sanctions succeeded in making Iran self-sufficient in many of its needs.
This no different from the motivation US sanctions gave Russia to undertake an extensive diversification of the economy in 2014 thus enabling it to withstand the sanctions and the volatility of oil prices and still grow. And despite what was described as a hybrid war by the United States against Russian-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, it will be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2021 and start delivering Russian gas to Germany and the European Union (EU) by end of 2021.
US sanctions have become a blunted weapon with no teeth. They will soon become history as the administration that imposed them.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London