According to Touraj Dehqani, the development of the project is going on uninterrupted and the project has reached over 50 percent of physical progress, IRNA reported.

“With the main pumping stations of the project becoming operational, we will witness the beginning of the oil transfer from Goreh to Jask by the end of the year,” Dehqani said.

“Of course, like other parts of the project, Jask export terminal itself has developed and progressed,” he added.

The official added if the required storages at the Jask terminal are not addressed by the end of the year, alternative options such as the use of single-point-mooring (SPM) storing the oil will be on the agenda.

The PEDEC’s goal is to export the first oil cargo from Jask oil terminal in the last month of the current Iranian calendar year (starting on February 19, 2021).

Goreh-Jusk oil pipeline project was inaugurated in late June by President Hassan Rouhani.

The pipeline will transfer one million barrels of heavy and light crude oil per day to Jask oil terminal in the southern province of Hormuzgan to be exported.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the project, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said it was one of the most strategic projects in the Rouhani administration.

Zanganeh said a total of $300 million has so far been invested in the project while another $800-$850 million is needed for its full operation.

“We hope that exports from Jask will begin as the government’s most strategic project by the end of this [Iranian] year,” the minister noted.

Director General of Chabahar Free Trade Zone Organization (FTZ) Abdul Rahim Kordi said on Sunday the Chabahar route goes through the Baltic Sea to Russia’s Saint Petersburg and then through the Volga River to Astrakhan from where it travels via the Caspian Sea to Anzali in northern Iran.

It then travels further south across the lengths of the Iranian territory to Chabahar on the Sea of Oman and then through the Arabian Sea to the Nhava Sheva port in India’s Mumbai.

Speaking in a local meeting, Kordi added Chabahar will become busier once a 580-kilometer railway connecting it to Zahedan, near the eastern Iranian border, comes on line.

It will be more than a half shorter than the traditional Suez canal taken by large ships to deliver cargoes from Europe to Asia, he said, adding the Chabahar route will decrease the time needed from 38 days to 14-16 days.

Noting that the Iranian government has been awash with requests for foreign investment in Chabahar, Kordi added, India has been a major stakeholder in development projects in Chabahar as the country seeks to facilitate its trade access to Afghanistan and other landlocked countries in the Central Asia region.

“Being present in Chabahar has become so popular that we currently lack the capacity to process some of the excess investments in this region,” Kordi added.

Referring to Chabahar as the sole Iranian ocean port, the official stressed its significance on the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman shores and in North-South Corridor.

He described Iran as a terminal in the world, noting that the port of Chabahar can be the connecting point of the North-South and East-West corridors.

 

IRNA and Press TV contributed to this story.

Rouhani made the comment after he launched an oil pipeline project which will enable Iran to export its oil using a route other than the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

“What is strategic about this project is that many countries in the region have managed to find a second way so that they can export their oil using other routes whenever the Strait of Hormuz faces danger,” Rouhani said addressing a ceremony to inaugurate the project.

“This is a strategic decision and an important step for Iran that will secure the continuation of our oil exports,” he said in a televised speech.

Rouhani said Iran aimed to export 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil by March from Jask, a port on Iran’s Sea of Oman coast, just south of the Strait of Hormuz.

“This move will assure our oil buyers that Iran will continue exporting oil if the Strait is closed,” he said.

The 1,000-km pipeline will bring oil from Goreh in Bushehr port city in the Persian Gulf to Jask.

The Kharg Island terminal in the Persian Gulf is currently Iran’s main terminal, accounting for 90 percent of its oil exports. To reach Kharg, tankers must pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

With the launch of the pipeline from Goreh to Jask, the country’s oil exports will no longer be linked to the Hormuz Strait, which will make Jask strategically important as the country’s second-largest crude oil export terminal.

Hit by US sanctions, Iran’s oil exports are estimated at 100,000 to 200,000 bpd, down from more than 2.5 million bpd that Iran shipped in April 2018. The Islamic Republic’s crude production has halved to around 2 million bpd.

The strait is a narrow channel at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes from West Asian producers to markets in Asia, Europe, North America, and beyond.

Reuters and Xinhua contributed to this story.

The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important bottleneck for oil, where almost a fifth of the world’s crude or about 20 million barrels per day (bpd) passes through to markets in Asia, Europe, North America and beyond, Press TV reported.

Shipping through the narrow strait, with the lane just three kilometers wide in either direction at its narrowest point, has become fraught since the US began building its military presence in the Persian Gulf.

Iran is currently building a $1.8-billion oil pipeline to its port of Jask outside the mouth of the Persian Gulf as part of plans to protect its exports against potential problems in the region and to boost shipments of Caspian oil.

The approximately 1,000-kilometer pipeline will bring oil from Goreh in Bushehr to Jask, making it strategically important as the country’s second-largest crude oil export terminal.

The Kharg Island terminal deep in the Persian Gulf is currently Iran’s key outlet, accounting for 90 percent of its oil exports. To reach Kharg, tankers must pass the Strait of Hormuz.

“We are now building a 1,000-kilometer pipeline from Goreh to Jask, and our oil exports are no longer connected to the umbilical cord of the Strait of Hormuz. This is a first in Iran’s history,” Rouhani told a governors’ meeting in Tehran late Tuesday.

Rouhani said that the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei had told him that the project was “the most strategic work” his administration had done.

“This pipeline, through which we will be transporting our oil to Jask and the Sea of Oman, is a great, huge and unique work in the history of Iran,” the president added.

The new terminal is close to Chabahar which Iran is developing in cooperation with other countries, most notably India.

Chabahar is about to become a key link in the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multimodal network of ship, rail and road routes to move freight between India, Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia, and Europe.

It offers a key trade and transport corridor that presents a cheaper and shorter alternative to the traditional route through the Suez Canal.

The terminal would be connected to Iran’s Caspian Sea port of Neka, enabling Tehran to boost shipments of oil from Caspian producers.

Iran’s oil industry is on the frontline of the fight against the United States’ maximum pressure in a bid to reduce exports to zero.

The head of Iran’s Plan and Budget Organization, Mohammad Baqer Nobakht, said earlier this month that the government planned to run the country without oil. Iran, he said, earned just $8.9 billion from the sale of oil and related products in the last fiscal year, down from a peak of $119 billion less than a decade ago.

A boom in manufacturing has already seen Iranian companies looking beyond the domestic market to export an increasingly diverse range of goods, turning the devaluation of the rial to their advantage.

In 2019-20, non-oil exports totaled $41.3 billion, exceeding oil exports for the first time in Iran’s modern history. Around half of Iran’s non-oil exports were reportedly in manufactured goods, meaning that Iran’s factories earned more than double what the country’s oil rigs earned in export revenue last year.

Iranian consumer goods and industrial products—ranging from cookies to stainless steel—are exported widely within the Middle East as well as further afield to China, Russia, and Europe.

Manufacturing is also a major contributor to employment. Between March 2018 and December 2019, the manufacturing sector added 472,000 jobs.

The pivotal role of the sector in Iran’s economic resilience has not escaped the attention of the Trump administration. In January, Washington imposed new sanctions, targeting Iran’s construction, manufacturing, textiles, mining, aluminum, copper, iron, and steel industries, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

The coercive measures affect the private sector and millions of blue-collar workers in Iranian factories, disproving the US government’s claim that the sanctions target the state and not ordinary people.