Iranian oil has been delivered to Europe for the first time since the sanctions were lifted in January by the European Union(EU). You may recall that an oil trade embargo was imposed on Iran by the European Union for them to put an end to their nuclear program back in 2012.

An Iranian oil tanker,The Monte Toledo, was on Sunday the first to deliver Iranian crude into Europe.

The Monte Toledo and its companions are the vanguard in the return of Iran into the European oil market. Petro-Logistics SA, a Geneva-based tanker-tracking firm, estimated Iran exported in February about 1.4 MMbopd, up 350,000 bopd from the average 2015 level.

Although the increase falls short of the 500,000 bopd that Tehran had promised, there are signs that exports into Europe will pick up this month.

“It does take a while to get those fields back up,” said Petro-Logistics director Daniel Gerber. “But I think they’re going to hit the increase of 500,000 bopd in March.”

Head of energy research at Citigroup in London, Seth Kleinman, said that in addition to higher export volumes this month, more countries were buying.

“You see tankers going to Spain, Romania, Tanzania, France and the U.A.E. You got an uptick to India in February too,” he said.

Although there are still some challenges, banking restraints mean that some customers are finding it hard to transfer payments for Iranian crude and the National Iranian Oil Co. has offered to swap crude for gasoline to get deals done, according to local reports

Read more in Worldoil.com

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