US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Thursday that Iran appears to have cut back oil production by 400,000 barrels per day and is likely to reduce it more as its storage units fill.
"It looks like they've likely already cut back their production, maybe by 400,000 barrels a day. They'll likely continue to ramp down their production as their storage fills and their inability to export oil," Wright said in an interview with Fox News.
A US naval blockade of Iranian ports has shrunk Tehran's oil exports, stranding a growing stockpile of crude on tankers as Iranian storage sites run out of space, shipping data showed, and analysts said.
Just a handful of carriers carrying Iranian crude have left the Persian Gulf of Oman between April 13 and 25, oil analytics firm Vortexa said. That's down over 80 per cent from a comparable period in March, when Iran exported 23.4 million barrels, LSEG data shows.
"Hopefully, that's an additional incentive for Iran to get to the end that everyone knows we're going to get to, which is to end the Iranian nuclear programme and to restore flow of traffic through the Straits of Hormuz," Wright said.
"That day is coming. The question is, just with Iran's cooperation or without Iran's cooperation."
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu)
