South Africa would resume oil imports from Iran "tomorrow", if sanctions were lifted as agreed in July, a senior government official said on Wednesday.
"We are definitely negotiating and looking at when to fully resume oil imports from Iran. For South Africa, if there's a process of doing that lawfully, tomorrow we will do it, if there are no obstacles to that," deputy foreign minister, Nomaindiya Mfeketo, told reporters via videolink from Capetown, Reuters reported.
"It depends on how quick those negotiations are ... so that we can sign on the dotted line."
Iran plans to produce 3.8 million to 3.9 million barrels of oil a day by March, with output rising by 500,000 barrels a day soon after sanctions are lifted and by 1 million barrels within the following five months.
On July 14, Iran and the six world powers agreed to lift sanctions in return for limiting Tehran's nuclear program.
A day later, South Africa's government said it had never agreed with sanctions against Iran and that its oil refiners had suffered from a ban on crude exports from there. Iran was once the biggest oil supplier to South Africa, which boasts the continent's most industrialized economy and was its second-biggest consumer of crude oil, importing some 380,000 barrels per day.
