The National Iranian Oil Company’s crude production has experienced a 37% increase in the first five months of the current fiscal year (March 21-Aug. 20) compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
Based on OPEC's secondary sources data, NIOC’s production was barely 1.9 million barrels per day in 2020 between March and August; the figure has now reached 2.5 million bpd, IRNA reported.
Iran’s oil output stood at 3.9 million bpd, 3.5 million bpd, 2.4 million bpd and 2 million bpd in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively.
The country’s oil production capacity almost halved to 2 million barrels per day since former US president, Donald Trump, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and announced tough new sanctions that attempted to create an economic siege.
Exports, as high as 2.6 million barrels per day three years ago, dropped to under 500,000 bpd, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Central Bank of Iran’s data show that the country’s economic growth was minus 2.5 last spring as NIOC exports hit a trough. Nonetheless, as NIOC started to sell more oil, economic growth reached 5.4 in the summer of 2020.
CBI statistics indicated that economic growth was minus 7.4 in 2019, which approached 1.4 in 2020.