Iran Ups Crude Exports to South Korea

(FNA)- Official customs data showed that Iran has increased its oil exports to South Korea in April.

Reuters reported on Thursday that South Korea more than doubled its crude oil imports from the Islamic Republic of Iran in April month-on-month.

South Korea’s crude imports from Iran stood at 552,884 tons or 135,088 barrels per day (bpd) in April, up from 274,808 tons the month before.

South Korea took 2.2 million tons, or roughly 136,000 bpd, in the first four months of 2014 from the Islamic Republic, down 8 percent from the same period in 2013 and slightly more than the average 134,000 bpd for all of last year.

In February, South Korea’s imports of Iranian crude oil more than doubled to 8.140mln barrels, or 290,714 b/d, compared with 3.974mln barrels a year earlier, data by state-run Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) showed.

This marked the first year-on-year increase in the country’s imports of Iranian crude.

The February volume surged more than four times from imports of 1.997mln barrels in January, the data showed.

For the first two months of this year, South Korea imported 10.137mln barrels of crude from Iran, up 2.7% from 9.870mln barrels in the same period last year.