Financial Tribune - Private sector in Iran cannot make miracles happen in international oil business under the sanctions regime as it was never trained for a large and unknown market.

Head of the Iranian Oil Products Exporters' Union, Abolqasem Hashemi, told IRNA on Saturday that "Oil is a strategic commodity and cannot be bought and sold easily as other goods;moreover, the territory is unfamiliar for the Iranian private sector," he added.

The National Iranian Oil Company has offered crude oil on the Iran Energy Exchange 14 times and hardly the first two were attractive.

Although offering crude oil on the stock market is part of government efforts to involve the private sector in oil trade, it cannot produce the desired results in the short-term because the key constraint is that this business has always been under the full control of the government, he noted.