Iran crude oil output to rise to 4.3mn bpd soon: Official

A senior Iranian oil official says the country plans to increase its crude oil production to 4.3 million barrels per day (bpd) soon, amid hopes for the removal of anti-Iran sanctions.

“In the near future, Iran’s oil production capacity will reach 4.3 million barrels,” Mansour Moazzami, the Iranian deputy oil minister for planning and supervision on hydrocarbon resources, said at a Sunday conference in Tehran.

The official also pointed to Iran’s current refining capacity of 1.8 million bpd and noted that the figure will rise to three million in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Iran has increased its natural gas production by 100 million cubic meters and, apart from exports to Iraq, Oman and Turkey, the country has no problem meeting its domestic needs during the cold season, Moazzami pointed out.

In May, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said oil production capacity of the Islamic Republic would reach four million bpd by the end of the current Persian calendar year in March 2015.

Iran will be capable of extracting from its oil reservoirs for the next six decades as the country's proven oil reserves are estimated at 157 billion barrels, the NIOC says.

Tehran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - China, Russia, Britain, France, and the United States - plus Germany are drafting a final deal on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program with a view to removing sanctions against Iran, notably its oil sector.

The two sides clinched a landmark interim deal in the Swiss city of Geneva on November 24, 2013.