Timeline
The Iranian oil bourse, first reported in 2005, initially had a widely publicised opening date of March 20, 2006. which is the Iranian New Year, Nauroz. According to an April 2005 report, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), the Wimpole Consortium and a private staff fund for retired petroleum workers were to form a consortium developing the exchange.
January 2006 Chris Cook of the Wimpole Consortium referred to delays in the process due to the election to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and subsequent difficulty in appointing a new oil minister acceptable both to the president and parliament.
March 2006 the Petroleum Minister of Iran, Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, announced that due to "technical glitches", the Bourse launch was postponed, with no new date set. However, as of April 26 Iran had restarted its move to open the oil market, and Kazem announced the bourse was set to open the first week of May.
May 2006 Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Davoud Danesh-Jafari said the Oil Ministry has a two-month deadline for presenting the Articles of Association of the Iranian Oil Bourse. Danesh-Jafari said that the euro had not yet been finalized as the legal tender of transactions in the oil bourse, and the final decision about that depends upon the Oil Ministry’s proposed IOB Articles of Association.
July 2006 a building has been purchased and the projected opening date was originally slated for September 2006. On September 15, Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh stated that all preparatory requirements had been arranged for launching the oil stock market in the country. However, the launch has still not occurred.
December 2006 Bloomberg cited two Iranian newspapers reporting Iran's Minister of Economy Davoud Danesh-Ja'fari Iran as wanting to cut US dollar based transactions to a minimum.
March 2007 Tehran based Press TV reported that the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad announced a shift of its major currency from dollars to euros. Iraqis traveling to Iran will pay for a visa in euros in line with other Iran Embassy locations.
March 2007 The New York Times reported that China's state-run Zhuhai Zhenrong Trading, the biggest buyer of Iranian crude worldwide, began paying for its oil in euros late last year. Iranian officials have said for months that more than half the OPEC member's customers switched their payment currency away from the dollar as Tehran seeks to diversify its reserves, but news of the Zhenrong change is the first outside confirmation. Japan has also announced that it would be willing to switch to Yen from US Dollars. Iran's central banker announced in March 2007 that Iran had cut its holding of U.S.-dollar assets to around 20% of its foreign reserves in response to U.S. hostility.
July 2007 Iran asked Japan to pay for its oil purchases in Japanese Yen.
September 2007 Japan's Nippon Oil has agreed to buy Iranian oil using yen.
December 2007 Iran stops accepting U.S. dollars for oil.
January 2008 Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters that the bourse will be opened during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1–11).
February 2008 On February 4, the Iranian Cabinet approved the creation of the oil bourse in two stages - first a raw oil exchange and secondly an oil byproducts exchange. The Ministry of Finance and Economics, the Oil Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Central Bank of Iran are required to create a workgroup to coordinate the project, and the Iran Commodities Bourse Company is given the task of carrying out the project. The communique from the Cabinet states that the "Ministry of Finance and Economics Affairs is required to take measures in making the petrochemical byproducts bourse operational by the end of February 2008."
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