Iran expects to increase its oil production by 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) to reach 3.5 million bpd output by the end of next month, the head of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said on Wednesday.
At the time when the current Iranian administration took office in 2021, the country was producing 2.2 million bpd of oil, NIOC's chief executive Mohsen Khojastehmehr was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Iranian oil output is set to hit 3.5 million bpd by the end of the Iranian month of Shahrivar, or September 22, 2023, the executive added.
Last month, Iran was already producing 3.1 million bpd of oil, the highest level in nearly five years, a member of the energy committee at the Iranian Parliament said in July.
Iran has boosted output by nearly 1 million bpd since President Ebrahim Raisi took office in August 2021. Iranian oil production increased from 2.2 million bpd back then to 3.1 million now, Hossein Hosseinzadeh, a member of the energy committee at the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, told Iranian news agency IRNA.
According to estimates by Argus, the last time Iran produced that much oil was in October 2018.
That was the year in which then-U.S. President Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions on Iran's oil exports after withdrawing the United States from the nuclear deal.
Per OPEC's secondary sources in its latest Monthly Oil Market Report, Iranian crude oil production stood at 2.754 million bpd in June, up by 56,000 bpd compared to May, and higher than the 2022 average of 2.554 million bpd. Iran itself has not reported production figures to OPEC since the U.S. sanctions on its oil industry returned in 2018.
The higher oil production in recent months has been supported by stronger Iranian exports to China, Venezuela, and Syria.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More
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