Iran’s oil minister says the country’s crude output has to reach 6.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the very near future and before global conventions can hamper any increase in production.
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on Monday that a next administrative government which is expected to take office in mid-summer should immediately move to ramp up oil output.
“We can easily reach 6.5 million bpd in oil output ... any government that comes to office must bring output to 6.5 million bpd,” said Zanganeh during a ceremony to award oil field exploration contracts.
The current administration of President Hassan Rouhani is barred from contesting the upcoming presidential votes on June 18. Rouhani’s foreign ministry officials have been attending indirect talks with the US in Austria as they press for a lifting of sanctions imposed by Washington on Iran’s crude exports since 2018 when a former US government pulled out of Iran’s nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
Analyst believe the next government in Iran would be able to exponentially increase oil output after an easing of US sanctions as a result of a potential agreement on revival of the JCPOA.
Iran had reached a daily oil export figure of nearly 3 million bpd some three years after signing the JCPOA and just before the re-imposition of US sanctions.
Zanganeh said that output ramp-up was a must for Iran regardless of the country’s efforts in recent years to diversify the economy away from oil.
The minister said that oil producing nations would face restrictions on output in future mainly because of international efforts to limit the use and production of fossil fuels.
“It won’t take too long for (international) conventions to be ratified to cap countries’ oil output. We should increase production as quickly as we can because international restrictions would trouble us,” he said.
Zanganeh also dismissed concerns about lack of customers for increased Iranian crude supplies, saying finding a market for oil would be easy as it has been the case for neighboring Iraq.
“Iraq could never reach 3 million (bpd) in output but it is now producing 5 million and it has its own market,” he said.