Iran using all resources to sell oil in ‘grey market’

DUBAI, May 05 (Reuters): Iran has mobilised all its resources to sell oil in a "grey market", bypassing US sanctions that Tehran sees as illegitimate, state media quoted Deputy Oil Minister Amir Hossein Zamaninia as saying on Sunday.

The United States, which last year withdrew from a 2015 Iran nuclear deal with world powers, has told buyers of Iranian oil to stop purchases by May 1 or face sanctions.

Iran says it will continue to export oil in defiance of US sanctions, part of a campaign by Washington aimed at halting Tehran's ballistic missile programme and curbing its regional power.

"We have mobilised all of the country's resources and are selling oil in the 'gray market'," state news agency IRNA quoted Zamaninia as saying.

Zamaninia gave no details about the "gray market", but Iran is widely reported to have sold oil at steep discounts and often through private firms during sanctions earlier this decade.

"We certainly won't sell 2.5 million barrels per day as under the (nuclear deal)," Zamaninia said, giving no figures for current sales.

"We will need to make serious decisions about our financial and economic management, and the government is working on that."

"This is not smuggling. This is countering sanctions which we do not see as just or legitimate," Zamaninia said.

An earlier report adds: Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday Iran must counter US sanctions by continuing to export its oil as well as boosting non-oil exports.

Rouhani's comments, carried live on Iranian TV, came a day after Washington acted to force Iran to stop producing low-enriched uranium and expanding its only nuclear power plant, intensifying a campaign aimed at halting its ballistic missile programme and curbing its regional power.

"America is trying to decrease our foreign reserves ... So we have to increase our hard currency income and cut our currency expenditures," Rouhani said.

"Last year, we had we non-oil exports of $43 billion. We should increase production and raise our (non-oil) exports and resist America's plots against the sale of our oil."

Friday's move, which Rouhani made no direct reference to, was the third punitive US action taken against Iran in as many weeks.

Last week, it said it would stop waivers for countries buying Iranian oil, in an attempt to push Iran's oil exports to zero. The United States also blacklisted Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Efforts by the Trump administration to impose political and economic isolation on Tehran began with last year's US withdrawal from the nuclear deal it and other world powers negotiated with Iran in 2015.