U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday the United States will consider waivers for some countries that need more time to stop importing Iranian oil to avoid disrupting global oil markets. Reuters, which reported his remarks, said they were embargoed for release until Monday.
President Donald Trump has threatened to sanction countries that fail to stop importing Iranian oil by November 4.
“We want people to reduce oil purchases to zero, but in certain cases, if people can’t do that overnight, we’ll consider exceptions,” Mnuchin told reporters, according to Reuters.
Mnuchin’s statements helped clarify comments made by some U.S. officials that suggested the United States might consider providing some exemptions for countries that rely heavily on Iranian oil.
India, China, and Russia are Iran’s top importers of oil.
President Donald Trump has warned that the United States will sanction any countries that fail to stop importing Iranian oil by November 4.
“We’ve said very specifically, there’s no blanket waivers, there’s no grandfathering,” Mnuchin reportedly said in his embargoed statements. “We want to be very careful in the wind-down around the energy markets to make sure that people have the time. The State Department has the ability to issue waivers around significant reductions in the oil markets, that’s something that Treasury and State will be doing.”
Last week, Secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned that Iran “sanctions are returning.”
“Remember the last few years, the sanctions were lifted. And so much of this malign activity, this increase in resources provided to Hizballah, the increase in resources provided to the Shia militias fighting in Iraq and in Syria, the support for the Houthis in Yemen, the efforts in Bahrain, those all took place against the backdrop of a relief from sanctions as a result of agreements that were entered into in the JCPOA,” Pompeo said at the time of his comments.
Widespread angst over the return of sanctions on Iran has caused the Iranian currency to reach a record low of 90,000 rials to one U.S. dollar, prompting widespread protests replete with calls for a change in leadership including overthrowing the current regime.
On Thursday, Iran’s special envoy Ali Akbar Velayati said Russia was working on ways to help Iran bypass U.S. oil sanctions. Velayati announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin plans to invest up to $50 billion in Iran’s oil and gas sector and noted that Russian firms could replace Western oil companies that have left or are leaving Iran.
Next year, the United States will surpass both Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s biggest oil producer with approximately 11.8 million barrels a day.
“If the forecast holds, that would make the U.S. the world’s leading producer of crude,” Linda Capuano, who heads the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said, according to the Associated Press.
This will make the United States the world’s biggest oil producer for the first time since 1974.
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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