http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=3538&sectionid=351020103

Iran's crude customers shifting currency
Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:33:10

Iran's efforts to switch from U.S. dollar to other currencies in crude oil deals appear to be progressing.

An official with Iran's oil ministry says 60% of payments are now made in non-dollar currencies.

The U.S. has been trying to prevent overseas banks doing dollar deals with Iran, a move which Washington leaders think could undermine the Iranian economy.

However, Tehran has proved those efforts ineffective by introducing a currency shift in crude deals.

Iran has succeeded in ensuring that almost all European and some Asian clients have agreed to pay in currencies other than U.S. dollars, a senior oil official said on Thursday.

Tehran has informed its clients that it would welcome their decisions to swap trade from the U.S. dollar to a mixture of currencies, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, the director of international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), has told Reuters.

This is based on commercial reasons such as the weak dollar.

Iran's currency shift policy was provoked by a decision by Washington last September to impose U.S. dollar sanctions on the Bank Sederat of Iran (BSI).

This, as Ghanimifard has emphasized, made Iran push for payment in euros and other currencies due to concerns about the weak state of the greenback.

Nevertheless, the official emphasized that payments are still based on dollar pricing.

"Pricing as you know is based on the quotations that we get from the international market and when the international market quotes anything for crude or for the products all of them are for the U.S. dollar," Ghanimifard said.

With exports hovering around 2.4 million barrels per day, Iran's annual income from crude sales stand at an average of above $40 billion.

Iran's leading crude clients are the big Asian consumers Japan and China with Italy and France the leading European clients.