TEHRAN – Iranian Oil Minister Javad Oji has appointed oil industry veteran Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr as the new managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

Khojasteh-Mehr was appointed as deputy oil minister and NIOC head on Wednesday, according to a statement published by the Oil Ministry’s news service Shana.

In his appointment decree, Oji has tasked the new NIOC head with increasing the country’s oil and gas production capacity with a focus on South Pars gas field which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf and oilfields shared with Iraq in southwest Iran.

Khojasteh-Mehr replaces Masoud Karbasian who served as the NIOC head since 2018. He was minister of finance from August 2017 until his impeachment in August 2018. He had also held office as deputy economy minister and headed Islamic Republic of Iran's Customs Administration (IRICA).

Khojasteh-Mehr has a PhD in hydrocarbon reservoirs from Iran’s Amirkabir University of Technology, which is generally known in the West as Tehran Polytechnic.

His most senior positions in the Oil Ministry include serving as deputy minister for planning and leading the Tadbir Drilling Development Company (TDDC), a post he has been holding for the past years.

The NIOC is one of the largest oil companies in the world with nearly $200 billion worth of assets as per estimates published in 2012. The company oversees large-scale operations in the Iranian oil industry and controls major refineries across the country.

Iran’s Oil Ministry hopes NIOC can swiftly increase its output to 3.8 million barrels per day if U.S. removes sanctions of the Islamic Republic in case the two countries and other world powers can revive a 2015 international agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program.

EF/MA