Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani announced Thursday the opening of a new oil export terminal on the Gulf of Oman that will allow shipments to avoid the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Rouhani said on live television that Iran had finished the construction of a 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) pipeline and had begun “operation of the export terminal” at Jask in the Makran region.
About $2 billion in investment was plowed into the project with the aim of creating a daily export capacity of one million barrels of crude oil through the new Jask terminal. In the project’s first phase it will carry 300,000 barrels of oil per day, Iran’s oil ministry’s news agency Shana reported.
It is expected that this capacity will be increased to one million barrels in the near future.
The project, which took nearly two years to complete, employed more than 250 contractors and local manufacturers.
According to Shana, the project has created 5,000 direct and 15,000 indirect jobs to get to this stage.
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital waterway in which a fifth of world oil output passes.
The new export terminal comes amid a pause in negotiations to salvage Iran’s nuclear deal.
Following ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi’s win in presidential elections last month, an Iranian official declared Saturday that talks on Iran’s nuclear deal in Vienna will not resume until August.
A deal could lead in sanctions relief and Iran exporting an extra 1 million barrels per day, or 1% of global supply, from its storage facilities for more than six months.
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