TOKYO: Asian imports of Iranian crude oil rose from a year ago in June, the last month before a landmark agreement that will eventually lead to more exports from the country was reached on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

Imports by Iran’s four biggest buyers — China, India, Japan and South Korea — totalled 1.17 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, up more than 13 percent from a year earlier, government and tanker-tracking data showed.

It would take around $100 billion to return Iran’s oil industry to the level of five years ago, Industry Minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said in an interview published in Austrian newspaper Wiener Zeitung.

“My sense is that really long term (production) contracts still won’t be in place until maybe mid-2016,” Richard Nephew, a sanctions specialist at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, New York, told Reuters Global Oil Forum. Iranian oil exports may rise by between 300,000 to 500,000 bpd after the nuclear agreement starts in 2016, he added.