South Africa has said oil imports from Iran will resume on the 10th of September, if sanctions were lifted as was agreed in July, a senior government official told Engineering news.

Iran used to be South Africa’s  biggest oil supplier, which boasts of the continent's most industrialized economy and was also its second-biggest consumer of crude oil, importing some 380 000 bbbl/d.

“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 commented. “It depends on how quick those negotiations are . . . so that we can sign on the dotted line.” He added.

 On 14th of July, six world powers decided to lift sanctions in return for Iran accepting long-term solutions to a nuclear programme that the West suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb.

However the next day, South Africa's government stated that it had never agreed with sanctions against Iran and that its oil refiners had suffered from a ban on crude exports from there.