Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.12/ Trend F. Milad/
Iran's oil industry needs a bigger share of the budget next year to accelerate its project development plans, the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Ahmad Qalebani said on Friday.
"We have had good negotiations with the MPs and we expect a rise in the oil industry's share of the budget," the Shana News Agency quoted Qalebani as saying.
The National Iranian Oil Company's managing director Ahmad Qalebani had previously said that the country's daily oil and gas outputs should amount to five million barrels and 1.47 billion cubic meters by 2015.
Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said in August 2011 that the Iranian government should consider plans for the development of joint oil fields.
The government should increase its budgets for the development of joint oil fields, Qasemi added.
"The oil industry's infrastructure needs more than 500 trillion rials (about $41 billion) investment to achieve the objectives of the 20-Year Outlook Plan," Qasemi was quoted as saying.
Daily gas production in Iran is about 600 million cubic meters and this is projected to increase to 1.2 billion cubic meters in the future. According to the National Iranian Gas Company, the country's oil and natural gas reserves account for 10 per cent and 16 per cent of total world reserves, respectively.
Iran, with 155 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves, ranks fourth worldwide, after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.
With 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia.