SEOUL (Commodity Online): As the US pressure increases on it allies to ban their Crude Oil imports from Iran, South Korea is reported to be in intense conversation with the US authorities to provide itself certain concessions with regard to the imports.

South Korea is the fifth largest crude oil importer in the world and is heavily dependent on Iran's oil. In fact, Iran accounts for about 8%-9% of total oil imports by South Korea. And even hough the country may like to continue its trade with the Middle East nation, its alliance with US is making it difficult to secure its future energy requirements.

South Korea is expected to join the US in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), aimed at completely banning oil imports from Iran. Seoul however plans to use a provision in the NDAA under which a country which has “significantly” reduced its imports from Iran can be exempted from the act.

As of latest data, South Korea imported close to 81.6 million barrels of oil from Iran in Jan-Nov 2011, accounting for 9.6% of total oil imports.