Baku, Azerbaijan, May 7
By Elnur Baghishov – Trend:
Iran can produce at least 6 million barrels of oil a day, Mehdi Hosseini, energy analyst and chairman of the committee for overseeing the preparation of new oil contract models, told ISNA, Trend reports.
According to Hosseini, Iran has 157 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Hosseini added that tens of billions of dollars of investments and technology are needed for producing 6 million barrels of oil per day.
"Right after signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), international oil companies and officials from various states flocked to Iran for oil talks," he said.
Hosseini added that the number of inquiries was so great that the Iranian side started to set conditions for some parties, such as Japanese companies.
"However, such a situation was formed in Iran that the signing of the contract and the investment became risky, and companies began leaving one after another," he said.
Commenting on the benefits that oil contracts could bring to Iran, the energy analyst said that, since American companies suffered losses due to sanctions imposed by the US on Iran, they did not want for that to happen again, and thus chose to refrain from partnering with Iran again.
Hosseini said that the development of oil fields could restore Iran's position on oil markets. Also, the matter of contracts being signed between Iran and the world's oil giants also had an important role to play in the US pulling out of the nuclear deal.
"If agreements had been signed with European and Asian companies, Iran would have more support in the nuclear deal," he said.
The JCPOA, signed between Iran and the P5+1 group (US, UK, Russia, China, France and Germany), was implemented in January 2016. The US announced its withdrawal from the deal In May 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran in November of the same year.