Four tankers seized by the U.S. while en route to Venezuela were carrying cargoes of gasoline loaded in Iran, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said.
His acknowledgment is the first public statement by an Iranian official that the ships were transporting fuel from Iran when the U.S. confiscated them last week. The seizure was an unprecedented step by Washington and could destabilize global oil shipments if Iran retaliates.
“The cargoes were loaded from Iran, but neither the ships nor the cargoes belonged to Iran, and the U.S. declared victory for itself in the middle of this,” Zanganeh said on Monday at a briefing in Tehran. “The fuel was Iranian, but it had been sold to Venezuela and its payment had been cleared.”
Retaliatory action by Iran could disrupt energy markets if Tehran interferes with international oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical choke point for oil shipments. However, the impact on oil prices may be less pronounced than what it once might have been given lower fuel consumption in the face of pandemic-driven lockdowns.
Benchmark Brent crude gained 0.5% and was trading at $45.02 a barrel at 8:31 a.m. in London, down 32% this year.
The tankers were transporting 1.1 million barrels of petroleum, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement Friday. It’s not clear where the ships were at the time of the seizures because they had all turned off their satellite-tracking systems to avoid detection between May and July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Iran has been exporting gasoline to fuel-starved Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions that are intended to choke off both nations from oil revenue. The Justice Department said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the U.S. designates as a foreign terrorist organization, was behind the shipment.