Iran voiced confidence on Wednesday that it has the ability to regain its oil market share that it has lost to its rivals over the past few years as a result of the US-engineered sanctions.
Salb-Ali Karimi, the managing director of the Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOF Co.), told reporters that Iran’s return to the market with the previous production quota is a promise that will be materialized.
Karimi, whose company is a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) in charge of overseeing production in Iran’s central oil fields, said most Iranian oil fields are in the second half of their lifespan and require modern technology to increase their production.
“Iran needs to use the technologies of credible international energy corporations in different areas, especially over the management of reservoirs so that we will be able to attain maximum production,” the local media quoted Karimi as saying.
He further emphasized that many oil layers on the western banks of the Karoun River remain untapped, adding that they can have a significant contribution to increasing Iran’s oil production.
Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh has already announced that Iran has serious plans to increase its oil production by 500,000 barrels per day within two months and 1 million barrels per day within six to seven months once the sanctions against the country are lifted.
Zangeneh has also said that he has informed OPEC member states about this and has told them to make room for Iran’s incoming extra oil production.
The US-engineered sanctions bar foreign investments in Iran’s oil and gas projects. They also prevent Iran from selling above one million barrels per day of its oil to international clients. These have collectively reduced Iran’s oil production by about 50 percent.
Some of those sanctions are expected to be lifted within the next few months in line with an agreement that Iran and the P5+1 snatched in July over the Iranian nuclear energy program.
Iran produced above 4 million barrels per day but the sanctions that intensified over the past few years are believed to have brought this down to well below 3 million barrels per day.