LONDON: Iranian oil exports have dropped in July to as low as 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) due to sanctions and rising tension with the United States and Britain, according to an industry source and tanker data, deepening global supply losses.
The United States reimposed sanctions on Iran in November after pulling out of a 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and six world powers. Aiming to cut Iran’s sales to zero, Washington in May ended sanction waivers given to importers of Iranian oil.
Iran has nonetheless sent abroad about 100,000 bpd of crude in July, said the industry source, who tracks such flows. Data from Refinitiv Eikon put crude shipments at a similar rate and at 120,000 bpd if condensate, a light oil, is included.
Sara Vakhshouri, an analyst at SVB Energy International, a consulting firm based in Washington and Dubai, also said Iranian oil exports had probably fallen this month.
Vakhshouri estimated the most Iran could currently export at between 225,000 and 350,000 bpd, less than the 400,000 bpd she estimated Iran shipped in June.
“We can’t be sure that all of this capacity has been sold in July,” she said. “Also, it’s important to note that some of the deliveries mostly to China are based on IOU contracts and are not new sales.”
The drop in exports from Iran, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has deepened the impact of an OPEC-led supply-cutting pact. But oil prices have weakened to $64 a barrel from a 2019 high of $75, pressured by concern about slowing economic growth and demand.
Rising tension with the United States, which said on July 18 it had destroyed an Iranian drone, is probably keeping a lid on sales, analysts said. Tensions also spiked between Iran and Britain this month over captured oil tankers.
“Ongoing US-Iranian tensions have done little to improve the Islamic Republic’s ability to sell into foreign markets,” Kpler, another company that tracks oil flows, said in a report.
Iran’s July exports are down from about 300,000-500,000 bpd in June as estimated by industry sources, Refinitiv and the International Energy Agency.
The July export figure is a fraction of the more than 2.5 million bpd that Iran shipped in April 2018, the month before US President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the nuclear deal.
The exact level of Iranian exports has become more opaque since US sanctions returned in November, making it harder to assess volumes and meaning estimates are falling into a range rather than focusing on a definitive figure.
Iran has welcomed this opacity and stopped reporting its production figures to OPEC. Some of its oil exports are under the radar.
Tankers loading Iranian crude sometimes switch off their AIS signal, an automatic tracking system used on ships, only to switch it back on at a later stage of their journey, according to oil industry sources, making it harder to see actual volumes.
Kpler said Iran had loaded 417,000 bpd of crude and condensate onto tankers in July, down 115,000 bpd from June.
The amount held on tankers in storage had ballooned to 56 million barrels — double that of two months ago — due to a lack of buyers, Kpler estimated, and almost the same volume was held in tanks on land.
“The clearest evidence explaining the quick drop in Iranian loadings to near nil levels through July is the rapid increase in floating barrels,” the company said.
“Iranian land-based oil inventories, both home and abroad, are showing signs of climbing ever higher.”
Hit by sanctions and rising tensions, Iran’s oil exports slide in July
Hit by sanctions and rising tensions, Iran’s oil exports slide in July
- Crude exports fall as low as 100,000 bpd
- US aims to cut Iranian exports to zero
AI models could help to save lives, says experts at WGS
- With the rise of wearable health technology such as the Whoop and the Oura ring, people now have access to their own health data
DUBAI: AI language learning models could soon be used to give reliable medical advice, Director of the Stanford Center for Digital Health Dr. Eleni Linos told the World Governments Summit on Thursday.
“We will get to a point where the accuracy of these models results in people trusting them and using them even more,” she said.
Linos said that the models were currently “good enough” at offering quick guidance on how to react in situations and said they could be very helpful to parents, for example, if their child woke up in the middle of the night and needed immediate medical attention.
“I believe language learning models are equipped to answer these questions. They are definitely not perfect, but they are good enough. It can offer quick guidance into how we can react or respond to situations,” she said.
Linos said that AI language learning models could be crucial in saving lives and making quick decisions, not only in rural areas but in urban societies as well.
“Even in urban areas and for people with health insurance, getting access to doctors can take days or even months. Being able to get an answer within seconds is important, even if it’s not perfect and there is a risk that it’s not the same level as professional advice, it’s still something,” she said.
Co-founder and CEO of CREATE Medicines Daniel Getts said that data was a key element in monitoring the success of health technology.
CREATE Medicines is a clinical-stage biotechnology company based in Massachusetts that focuses on transforming how diseases are treated.
“The key element to success in monitoring health through this tech is data. Baseline data sets are going to be essential on how we apply tech ideas in relation to health,” Getts said.
He said that his company was approaching drug manufacturing and preventive medicine from a one-size-fits-all approach.
“We focus on making drugs that everyone can take, making a drug for one human doesn’t help humanity. We need drugs that are effective to every individual.”
With the rise of wearable health technology such as the Whoop and the Oura ring, people now have access to their own health data.
Linos said that these technologies monitored heart rate, sleep quality and even the food people consumed, and were changing the way people made health-conscious decisions.
“If you can imagine a world where you can call your doctor instantly, where you have the wisdom of traditional medicine passed on from generations, but that is somehow incorporated into available, tech-driven LLM that will give you not just instant, rigorous scientific advice, but that it’s informed by generations of wisdom and is available in moments … I think that would be an incredible vision for the future, where everyone in the world, regardless of where they live, what language they speak, can get the highest standard of medical advice, medical care, informed by science but also traditional wisdom at their fingertips,” she said.
Getts echoed this idea and said that the need to call a doctor was going to decrease in the future.
“Your need to call a doctor is going to become diminished over time because we’re going to empower people with education and access to therapies that are easier to administer and we can just understand how they work,” he said.
