Iran will soon launch 32 oil industry projects worth a total investment of $4.6 billion, Iranian Petroleum Minister Jawad Owji said on Wednesday.
Iran has also begun work on 50 new oil projects worth a total of over $50 billion, Iranian media quoted Owji as saying.
Since 2021, Iran has boosted its oil production by 60%, the oil minister said earlier in May.
In the latest Iranian calendar year to March 19, 2024, the Islamic Republic boosted its oil and gas production by 20% compared to the previous Iranian year, Owji added.
Iran has signed new contracts for the development of oil fields worth $13 billion, planning to add 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) to its production, state news agency Shana reported in March.
The deals are the biggest in the energy space for the past decade and they were all signed with local companies, according to minister Owji.
The production increase effort will focus on six fields, including the biggest one that Iran shares with neighbor Iraq-Azadegan-and its oldest producing field, Masjed Soleyman. The latter is the oldest producing field in the Middle East, with a total output to date of over a billion barrels.
Iran plans to increase its crude oil output to 4 million bpd, the country's Tasnim news agency reported earlier this week, as cited by Reuters.
No specific sources for the plan were provided but the original report in Tasnim said that "An economic council headed by Iran's interim president Mohammad Mokhber has approved a plan to raise the country's oil output from 3.6 million barrels per day to 4 million barrels per day."
Iran has been eager to increase its oil production despite U.S. sanctions that have significantly reduced the market for Iranian oil. Even so, Iran reported an increase in exports of crude recently, with the average daily for the first quarter hitting the highest in six years at 1.56 million bpd according to Vortexa data. Last year, the country exported 1.29 million bpd on average, which was 50% more than a year earlier.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More
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