The South Korean governmental source was quoted by Reuters as saying that the country's biggest oil refiner SK Energy loaded a second cargo of crude in Iran last week.
The cargo of two million barrels is under Iranian insurance cover to avoid the sanctions, said the source.
A spokesman for SK Energy's parent firm confirmed last week that another Iranian cargo of the same volume was already on its way to South Korea.
"SK Energy lifted its second cargo in Iran last week," said the source at South Korea's economy ministry, adding that SK Energy's first cargo had not arrived yet in Korea.
Another refiner, Hyundai Oilbank, will lift two million barrels in Iran by the end of the month, the government source said.
South Korean refiners plan to resume from September monthly imports of up to 6 million barrels, or 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of full contracted volumes, of Iranian crude.
South Korea's imports from Iran during the first eight months of this year were 38.77 million barrels or about 159,000 bpd.
SK Energy's term contracts with Iran this year provide for imports of two Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) of crude per month, or 4 million barrels, and Hyundai Oilbank imports one VLCC per month, or 2 million barrels.
South Korea announced late in June that imports of Iranian crude oil would be halted from July 1 due to an EU ban on insurance cover for tankers carrying Iranian crude, but after Tehran's envoy to Seoul warned that Iran would impose a full embargo on Korean goods if the country stopped oil imports from Tehran, South Korean officials announced that their country would resume oil imports from Iran.
In the meantime, Tehran offered to provide up to $1 billion of insurance cover to Iranian vessels shipping oil to South Korea as Iran seeks to keep its crude flowing to its top four customers: South Korea, China, India and Japan.
Iranian officials have always stressed that the EU decision to impose a ban on Iran's oil supply is ineffective, and added that there are always many customers for Iranian crude.
After months of debates, the EU member states reached an agreement in their meeting on January 23 to sanction oil imports from Iran and freeze the assets of Iran's Central Bank within the EU.
Following the decision, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton claimed that the sanctions are aimed at pressuring Iran to return to talks over its nuclear program.
Despite Ashton's claims, Iran has always underlined its preparedness to resume talks with the West but has meantime stressed that it will never accept any precondition for such talks.
On the other hand, the Iranian oil ministry in a statement late January downplayed the effects of the US and EU's unilateral oil sanctions against Tehran, and said such embargoes will merely harm the European economies and oil consuming countries.
European sanctions against Iran's oil exports will affect the world economy and hurt European and non-European countries, the statement said.
irna/281
A South Korean source announced on Wednesday that the two largest refiners in the country will continue supplying their demanded crude from Tehran despite the sanctions imposed by the US and its allies against Iran's oil industry, adding that the second crude consignment left Iran for S. Korea a couple of days ago.
News ID 182847
