Oil tankers have changed their destination from the United Arab Emirates to Iran to receive bunkering services, which is the process of supplying fuels to ships for their own use, according to National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company Managing Director Mostafa Kashkouli.

In the past, shipping lines, even those which carried Iranian crude oil, used to be supplied with fuels at the Port of Fujairah in the UAE, but the situation has changed in recent years, so that many are now being supplied with fuel at Iranian ports, such as Kharg, Assalouyeh, Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, and Kish, the IRNA news agency quoted Kashkouli as saying on Sunday.

Iran is planning to acquire a 20 percent share of bunkering in the Middle East by the end of the Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (2015), he added.

On April 30, Kashkouli said Iran had earned $1.5 billion through bunkering in Iranian calendar year 1392, which ended on March 20, 2014.

“Last year, 2.855 million tons of furnace oil and gas oil were sold to tankers,” he stated.

Kashkouli noted that the volume of bunkering is projected to hit 4 million tons in the current Iranian calendar year.

In Iranian calendar year 1392, furnace oil and gas oil bunkering rose by 31 percent and 7 percent, respectively, compared to 1391, which ended in March 2013.