Iran’s OPEC governor said on Saturday that Saudi Arabia and Russia have taken the oil market “hostage” by the time South Korea’s Iranian crude oil imports fell in August to their lowest since December 2015 with US sanctions on Tehran due to kick in from November. Saudi Arabia is the worlds top oil exporter and Russia is the worlds biggest oil producer. “Russia and Saudi Arabia claim they seek to balance the global oil market, but they are trying to take over a part of Iran’s share,” Hossein Kazempour Ardebili was quoted as saying by SHANA, the oil ministry’s news agency. Kazempour Ardebili told Reuters on Friday that the United States will find it difficult to cut Iran’s oil exports completely as the oil market is already tight and rival producers cannot make up the shortfall. US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Friday that Saudi Arabia, the United States and Russia "can between them raise global output in the next 18 months to compensate for falling oil supplies from Iran and elsewhere." In August, South Korea imported 232,723 tonnes of Iranian crude, or 55,028 barrels per day (bpd), down 85 percent from 1.55 million last year, customs data showed on Saturday. That was the lowest since imports of 207,629 tonnes in December 2015. Also, South Korea’s oil imports from Iran dropped 41.4 percent to 7.15 million tonnes, or 215,807 bpd, during the first eight months of the year versus the corresponding 2017 period, data shows. South Korea, the world’s fifth-largest crude oil importer, brought in a total of 12.62 million tonnes of crude in August, or 2.98 million bpd, down about 7 percent from 13.55 million a year earlier, Reuters reported. In August, South Korea stepped up purchases of oil from the United States and Australia to replace Iranian oil. US crude imports increased five-fold to 887,559 tonnes on the year, while imports from Australia nearly quadrupled to 305,347 tonnes.