CNBC: We Aren’t Really Enforcing Iran Oil Sanctions, ‘De Facto Policy’ ‘to Let Every Iranian Barrel on the Market’

On Monday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Last Call,” CNBC Contributor and Managing Director and Global Head of Commodity Strategy for RBC Capital Markets Helima Croft and host Brian Sullivan noted that sanctions on Iranian oil aren’t really being enforced with Croft stating that “there’s a de facto policy in Washington to let every Iranian barrel on the market.”

Sullivan asked, “Do you think OPEC may have to reign in Iran a bit? They got — you mentioned Venezuela and Iran are exempt from the deal because they were under sanction, we also know that the sanctions — how shall we say — are not doing squat really or don’t appear to be doing very much based on publicly available data of Iranian exports, etc. So, maybe OPEC needs to say to Iran, we gave you a break when we thought you were going to be really sanctioned, but not these sort of sanctions that are not being enforced, Iran you need to play nice.”

Croft responded, “100%, Brian, this is a question I put to the Saudi energy minister at the OPEC press conference in June, I raised the issue of, we have countries that are officially under sanction, but, essentially, there’s a de facto policy in Washington to let every Iranian barrel on the market. And we’ve already made the decision to pull back Venezuela’s sanctions. And so, those two countries alone are accounting for a significant amount of production on the market. You could say those two alone are over 700,000 additional barrels if you look year-on-year.”

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