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Iran increases oil production in Persian Gulf region

Oil&Gas Materials 18 December 2013 14:49 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 18

By Rahim Zamanov - Trend:

Iran has carried out two projects to optimise and develop energy consumption in the Reshadat and Resalat oilfields in the Persian Gulf region, Mehr News Agency reported on December 17.

Implementing the projects has reduced the platforms' energy consumption and increased the country's oil production by six million barrels per day.

The country plans to increase its oil production capacity up to four million barrels per day.

The IRNA news Agency reported on December 3 that the country's current production capacity stands at 3.5 million barrels per day.

Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said in his first days in office that the ministry's priority is to return Iran's oil capacity to that of the calendar year of 1384 (2005) which was around four million barrels per day.

The country's oil output capacity was 3.1 million barrels on the day the current administration started its work.

National Iranian Oil Company's managing director, Roknoddin Javadi, previously said that the process of increasing Iran's oil output capacity to four million barrels per day takes one year to complete.

However, he mentioned that the oil minister has not accepted the deadline yet.

Iran's crude oil exports have decreased from 2.2 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2011 to less than one mbpd currently.

Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on October 27 that the country's crude oil income would reach $54.5 billion annually if the US-led sanctions over Iran's oil export were removed.

The International Energy Agency said on December 11 that Iran which was once OPEC's second-largest oil producer, will be unable to sustain an increase in crude exports that support its economy when some measures to curb such shipments are eased, Bloomberg reported.

The European Union said last month that it intends to suspend a ban on insuring tankers carrying the Iranian oil from December or January.

The U.S. said it will stop forcing buyers to cut purchases, even if they still aren't allowed to increase them.

Iran's oil shipments to other nations rose by 89,000 barrels a day to 850,000 barrels in November, the IEA said, including both crude and condensates.

The country cut the amount of oil stored in tankers to 22 million barrels by the end of the month from 37 million barrels in October, according to the agency.

Iran produced 3.5 million barrels of crude a day at the start of 2012, before EU sanctions took effect ranking it second among members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, behind Saudi Arabia, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The IEA estimated Iran's daily crude production at 2.71 million barrels in November, up 30,000 barrels from October and ranking it sixth within OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Venezuela.

Iran sold $84.38 billion of crude oil in 2011, according to data from ITC TradeMap, a venture between the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. Its total exports of goods fetched $130.5 billion in the same year, the data shows.

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