The international community is now fully cognizant of Iran's important and effective role in the political and economic equations of the Middle East and the world.
The endorsement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action by the UN Security Council (on July 20) clearly indicated the world has recognized the importance Iran's historic role in international issues as well as its effective active diplomacy in foreign relations, it is said in an article by Pirouz Mousavi appeared on the Monday edition of English newspaper Iran Daily.
This is while, Iran's oil industry intends to fully tap its potentials in implementing oil projects by employing its well-trained and educated workforce, to improve its status in international energy markets.
The Oil Ministry has a number of projects underway to raise extraction from joint oilfields and new reserves and to boost export of hydrocarbon products.
Iran also plans to attain the top rank in the Persian Gulf and Middle East in terms of the number of oil terminals and cargo handling capacity, precision, quality and speed and security. This is an important and strategic target for the Oil Ministry for which sufficient planning has been done.
Another long-term objective of the oil industry is to develop oil terminals which rank among the top three in the world in terms of the abovementioned criteria.
To this end, the Oil Ministry intends to guarantee sustainable oil and gas production by increasing exports and imports and improving operations pertaining to receiving oil, blending crude, evaluating the quality and quantity of oil production and exports as well as oil swap.
Since the 11th government assumed office (2013), the Oil Ministry has done its best to raise crude production and exports. To achieve this, it has carried out a number of renovation, optimization and maintenance operations.
Currently, Iran's oil export capacity stands at 6 million barrels per day. This is while, with new oil storage depots becoming operational in Kharg Island, crude storage capacity of the island's oil terminal grew 4 million barrels per day to reach 28 million barrels.
It has always been a top priority for the ministry to improve indigenous knowledge in manufacturing oil industry equipment. A lot has been achieved in this respect.
The ministry has saved $2.18 million in two years by using domestic products and supporting Iranian producers.
Domestic experts have managed to construct a number of loading arms and install them successfully. The main motive behind this was to counter Western sanctions which prohibited Iran from importing strategic equipments.
The project will improve Iran's competitiveness and strategic status in international markets, help raise oil exports and overseas sales of techno-engineering services, transfer of modern technologies and promote indigenization of oil industry's strategic equipments.
Another significant accomplishment of oil industry experts was the construction of the first domestic vehicular portable tank prover — a volumetric vessel that has a reduced cross section or neck located at both the top and bottom or, in some cases, at the top only — used to verify the accuracy of the volume of oil exports. Designing and constructing a tank prover involve complicated processes.
Production of microbe powder is among the other projects currently undertaken by the oil industry. It is used to minimize oil contamination in exploration, extraction, transportation, refining and storing operations that cause a great deal of pollution which is a grave menace to the environment and sea.
The project is being implemented in cooperation with Iranian Oil Terminals Company, the Technology and Research Directorate of the National Iranian Oil Company and the Iranian Academic Center for Education Culture and Research.
Other achievements include building systems to prevent sedimentation in oil tanks, performing descaling and maintenance operations and renovating single buoy mooring systems once under the monopoly of US companies.