Iran may supply Caracas with more fuel: Zanganeh

Iran says it is negotiating to supply more gasoline to Venezuela under commercial terms, in spite of US threats of further sanctions.

"What we are doing is commercial," Iranian oil minister Bijam Namdar Zanganeh told reporters today. "Let us see how our negotiations proceed."

The gasoline that Iran recently supplied to Venezuela was sold at market prices, not as "charity," and some of the Venezuelan payment has already been made, Zanganeh said.

The US Treasury Department this week imposed sanctions on the captains of the five Iranian tankers that delivered around 1.5mn bl of gasoline and alkylate - an octane-enhancing gasoline blendstock - to Venezuela in late May and early June.

Venezuela's government did not specify how it paid for the Iranian supply, although Caracas is widely believed to have swapped gold.

The two Opec countries have made common cause around US sanctions, which have pummeled their crude production and exports.

Venezuela's state-owned PdV is working to repair its main oil refineries, with help from Iran and China, to help replenish the domestic market as the Iranian supply starts to run out.

At least four Venezuelan private-sector contractors are proposing to help PdV make the refinery repairs on humanitarian grounds, but they have so far tread cautiously in the face of potential US sanctions, industry participants tell Argus.

Venezuela's acute gasoline shortage has impeded food distribution from agricultural states in the interior of the country.

On 15 June, Mexico's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his country would supply gasoline to Venezuela as a humanitarian measure, if it were asked. There has been no public sign of official Venezuelan outreach to Mexico so far.

By Patricia Garip and Nader Itayim