Iran suffered $23.6bn from low oil prices
Iran’s media are speculating that plunging oil prices have already cost the country at least $23.6 billion in terms of lost petrodollars since mid-2014.
Tasnim news agency in a report on Friday alleged that plunging oil prices is a result of a campaign by the United States and Saudi Arabia to undermine the Iranian economy. That campaign, Tasnim wrote, was specifically intensified as Iran started to make progress in talks to resolve disputes over its nuclear energy activities with the view to remove the multiple-year sanctions against its economy.
“While oil prices stood at above $100 per barrel in early 2014, they started to nosedive from August 2014 onward in what was a result of the US collaboration with Saudi Arabia by means of which the kingdom surged its oil production even though the market was already saturated,” it said.
“The prices of oil - that had even reached as high as $105 per barrel - began to plunge from August 2014 and reached as low as $56 per barrel by the end of 2015.”
Accordingly, Iran lost over $3.56 billion dollars over a period of five months from August 2014 to December 2014, the news agency said.
“In 2015, the average price of Iran’s oil decreased to as low as $48.64 per barrel … thus inflicting a loss of $20.5 billion considering that the country has exported at least 1 million barrels of oil and given that it was selling its oil at least $56.3 per barrel lower from the record high prices of above $100 in the first half of 2014,” Tasnim report said.
In mid-December, Iran’s oil for the first time plunged below $30 per barrel for the first time in almost 20 years.
Iran has also announced that it had expected oil to fall below $30 per barrel, but officials have already emphasized that declining oil prices are nothing to be worried about.
The country’s Finance Minister Ali Tayyeb-Niya earlier said Iran had provided the required preparations to deal with the economic impacts of oil prices even below $30 per barrel.
Tayyeb-Niya said a large part of those preparations focuses on the implementation of a comprehensive national taxation program which is already on the agenda of the government.
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