Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar.8
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh says the current status of the Oil Ministry is a cause of shame, the Shana News Agency reported on March 8.
In an address at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Zanganeh criticized the situation of production at joint oilfields.
"Iraq is operating 200 drilling rigs in a joint field with Iran, while Iran is just operating 20 drilling rigs," he said.
He also criticized the administration of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"Iran should extract 700,000 barrels of oil per day from joint oilfields with Iraq," he said. "We should not wait 10 years to reach the goal. It requires just 2-3 years."
"It is painful for me to see that Iranian experts are working abroad," he said. "The hardest time of my life is when I think about our students who work outside Iran and worse than that is that they help to extract resources from our gas field in Qatar."
"Why an atmosphere should not be created in the country in which these educated people to serve the country?" the minister asked.
According to the latest report of International Energy Agency published on Feb.13, Iran exported averagely 1.07 million barrels of oil during 2013.
Iran's Custom Administration latest report, published on Feb.10 indicates that the country's condensate exports have increased by some 272.97 percent for the last three Iranian calendar months (October 23, 2013- January 20, 2014) compared to the previous months of the current year, which started on March 21, 2013.
Iran has exported $4.594 billion worth of condensates for the last three Iranian calendar months with an average monthly value of $1.531 billion.