NITC's revenues during the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2009) reached $1.5 billion. 51 percent of the revenues came from Europe, 26 percent from Asia, 15 percent from Africa and 8 percent from other parts of the world, including Canada, Venezuela and Latin America. Iran pumps about 4mn barrels per day to world markets, with roughly 60% bound for Asia and the remaining headed to Europe (2008)
. As at 2010, the company operated 28 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC), nine Suezmax and five Aframax tankers. It also owns three chemical vessels and a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier. As of January 2011, NITC has 46 tankers with an annual capacity of 10.6 million tons to be increase to 12.5 million tons by the end of the year. NITC has a huge project for replacing tankers, including the construction and purchase of 25 tankers with a total capacity of 6 million tons.[1] In 2009, Iran and South Korea's Daewoo signed a $128-million contract on tanker supply with a capacity to carry 2.1 million barrels of crude.[8] The state-owned enterprise says it has ordered 16 other oil tankers that will join its current fleet of 45 carriers by 2011. NITC expects by 2013 to have 74 ships of all sizes, including very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, and also smaller vessels. NITC will operate 50 VLCCs at that time, up from 28 in 2010. As at 2011, NITC ranks as the fifth-biggest tanker operator worldwide, with a total of 43 ships. Over the next two decades, Iran would need 500 new ships, including 120 oil tankers, 40 liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and over 300 commercial vessels. In 2009, in a move aimed at further enhancing Iran's shipbuilding industry, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he will ban the purchase of foreign ships by Iranian organizations
