Obama's BFF Turkey clashes with U.S. over Iranian oil imports.

Obama's BFF Turkey clashes with U.S. over Iranian oil imports.(Imra). Turkey is still highly dependent on Iranian oil imports, despite being given a six month "exception" to the sanctions, alongside India, South Korea and China, amongst others.
This was to give the countries time to diversify their energy sources which would enable them to "significantly reduce" their oil and natural gas imports from Iran or face punitive measures including being removed from the U.S. financial system.
The U.S law demands that states continue to decrease their imports every six months.
However, Turkey’s failure to totally adhere to this law has provoked consternation in the White House. According to a statement in Hurriyet Daily News, a Senate aide raised the issue, asserting that “While I find it very hard to believe the U.S. State Department didn’t remind our Turkish partners that U.S. law requires them to continue significantly reducing toward a permanent end to Iranian imports, U.S. law stands whether they received a warning or not.” Given Turkey’s winter fuel requirements and despite their increasing imports of Russian energy, the likelihood that Turkey will have the ability or the inclination to reduce purchasing over these harsh winter months is low. Turkey is arguing that these sanctions, and the expanded ones approved by the U.S. senate on Friday, do not apply to them. As Iran’s largest natural gas consumer, Turkey poses a real challenge to the United States ability and legitimacy to impose such regulations.
Erdogan has stated unequivocally that Turkey will continue to import these energy resources, informing both Tehran and Washington of this plan. Furthermore, to pay for these continued imports Turkey is having to convert lira into gold due to sanctions preventing them from transferring money into the country. This additionally violated the sanctions against supplying Iran with precious metals.
The Journal of Turkish Weekly interviewed energy security studies expert, Hasan Selim zertem, regarding these developments, asking whether Turkey’s position regarding the sanctions is legitimate.
“It is totally legitimate because it’s not a United Nations Security Council resolution, it’s mainly a group of countries that have a stated a policy against Iran. There have been a number of resolutions accepted by the UNSC but they proved to be inefficient so the U.S. as part of its policy against Iranian proliferation, initiation a unilateral policy which is being followed by Americas allies. Turkey has started to diversify its oil imports and this year Taner Yildiz, the Minister of Energy, stated that Turkey will buy 15-20 percent less oil and this will continue to be decreased incrementally.”
“The first problem is that Turkey cannot change its consumption activities over night as there is no surplus oil to be traded in the Mediterranean region although Libya just came back to the market. Secondly Turkey has signed some binding agreements with Iran which have to be fulfilled so as to avoid certain consequences of breaking these agreements in international courts.”
“On the other hand, Turkey is continuing to try and find some other ways to decrease oil imports from Iran so it’s started negotiations with Saudi Arabia and Russia. Here in turkey these energy deals are predominantly made by refinery monopoly TUPRA? which, in the last decade, made significant investments to refine Iranian oil so it is also hard for them to change their consumption patterns overnight. Concurrently, this also means that this is not a state policy.”
“Apart from oil, one of the main areas of sanctions is on natural gas. Turkeys position is more critical in this area because Iran supplies almost 20 percent of Turkey’s natural gas demand, this is a 25 year agreement and it’s hard for Turkey to cancel this with Iran considering the constraints in the natural gas market in the region. So we have to make a differentiation here. Regarding oil, Turkey will continue to diversify but regarding natural gas, Turkey’s position should be respected because this will not just be sanctions against Iran but sanctions against Turkey if Washington insists on stopping gas imports.”
Consequently, the U.S. and Turkey remain engaged in diplomatic talks to find a mutually acceptable solution to this issue. As the U.S. Ambassador to Ankara, Francis Ricciardone stated, “How we go about this is something we have to work out together. There are no easy answers, but we all agree that diplomacy is the way to go.”Hmmmm......Why is Obama giving Turkey, Iran's main trade partner preferential treatment?Read the full story here.

Related: As expected Obama will give BFF Turkey a waiver from sanctions, they 'only' import 45 percent of their oil from Iran and aid Iran avoiding sanctions.

Related - "Sanctions That Benefit" - Obama's BFF Erdogan's Turkey their gold imports jump by 150 pct in May.(HD).Turkish gold imports leapt by 150 percent in May due to unrelenting demand from sanctions-strapped Iran, where buyers are increasingly choosing to keep savings in the precious metal rather than paper currency. Turkey has imported 19.47 tons of gold in May, up from 7.78 tons in April, according to data released by the Istanbul Gold Exchange. Some of the increase was also attributable to the onset of the wedding season and regional tensions related to the 14-month-old uprising in neighboring Syria. But export data released a day earlier showed Iranian buying from Turkish gold traders has been the crucial factor. Sanctions to force Iran to curb its nuclear programme have targeted its energy and banking sectors and new measures from both the United States and European Union take effect in July, The sanctions have made neighboring Turkey an ever more important channel for the Islamic republic. Gökhan Aksu, vice president of Istanbul Gold Refinery, suspected Iran was seeking to hold some of its oil revenues in gold, while ordinary Iranians sought a safer asset as the rial currency was losing value and access to foreign currency was being choked off by the Western sanctions. “Iran needs to employ its resources coming from oil exports,” Aksu said. “They also have problems such as embargoes and the depreciation of the rial.” Foreign trade data showed Turkey earned $1.27 billion from exports of 23.9 tons of gold in April, dwarfing the $75.4 million earned from sales of 1.65 tons last year. Some 95 percent of the total gold exports went to Iran in April.Hmmmm.....Turkish gold sales to Iran in March soared over 30 times.Read the full story here.

Update: U.S. exempts seven countries that consume Iran oil from sanctions.
Obama administration officials didn't say how much the seven countries had cut their oil purchases. In March, U.S. officials signaled that they were seeking reductions of 15% to 22% of purchases.

Several large countries, including India and Turkey, said publicly that they were reluctant to reduce imports of Iranian oil because of their long reliance on the Islamic regime. They appear to have met the minimum level of cooperation that Washington demanded, however.How Much did Turkey actually 'reduce' it's inports??

Answer:
Before May, Turkey was the only buyer in Europe to increase purchases from Iran, while other European refiners cut back on imports of the crude ahead of an impending EU oil embargo due to take effect from July 1.In the first four months of 2012, Turkey imported 210,000 barrels per day of Iranian oil on average, including a huge 270,000 bpd in March, much higher than its 2011 average of 185,000 bpd.

In May Turkey's state-controlled refining company, Tupras, imported around 140,000 barrels per day (bpd), a 20 percent drop from its 2011 average, according to the latest shipping data, obtained by Reuters. Port data showed 152,000 tonnes of Iranian crude was delivered to the port of Aliaga in May, while 443,000 tonnes of Iranian crude was delivered to its second import terminal, Tutunciflik. Tupras is expected to import the same volume in June.
From July 1, Turkey will remain effectively the sole buyer of Iranian crude in Europe. Official trade data showed that in the first four months of this year, Iran accounted for about 58 percent of Turkey's near 6 million tonnes in total crude imports.
THIS REDUCTION IS A PURE SMOKESCREEN APPROVED BY THE OBAMA ADMIN!