TEHRAN – Considering the new resource allocations for the development of the oil industry in the budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year (starts on March 21), the country’s crude oil and gas condensate production is expected to increase by 144,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the next fiscal year.

According to Tasnim News Agency, in the budget bill for the next year, special attention has been paid to improving oil and gas production and development of energy infrastructure across the country in order to boost the oil output to 3.952 million bpd.

The country’s oil transmission network is also expected to expand fourfold to 10,758 kilometers next year, the report said.

Iran has been gradually boosting crude oil production to get ready for a strong comeback into the global market as the talks with world powers over the nuclear deal show signs of progress.

According to a Bloomberg report, National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has stated that the country’s oil fields are going through overhaul operations and connections with oil buyers are being re-established.

“In the most optimistic estimates, the country could return to pre-sanctions production levels of almost four million barrels a day in as little as three months,” the report published in May 2021 stated.

Back in November 2021, NIOC Head Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr said his company was planning to boost the country’s oil production capacity to the pre-sanction levels or nearly four million bpd by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2022).

“Based on our plans, we need $90 billion of investment in the oil sector, while $70 billion is also needed to develop gas fields,” Khojasteh-Mehr said in a press conference on November 28, 2021.

Khojasteh-Mehr further stated that considering the increase in the oil and gas production and the country's refining capacity, NIOC is also planning to boost the oil and gas industry’s export capacity to reach 1.5 times more than the pre-sanction levels over the next 10 years.

“The manpower working in the Iranian oil industry’s upstream sector is among the world’s most qualified, and the geography of the oil industry has enabled us to have energy security,” he stressed.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the NIOC head mentioned the country’s current crude oil and gas condensate exports, saying: “Exports of crude oil and gas condensate have increased and we are using all our capacities to maximize exports because the sustainability of crude oil exports is our policy.”

According to him, NIOC is looking for new and safe markets for exports to continue selling oil.

EF/MA