TEHRAN: Iran’s Oil Minister says he expects the country’s overall oil production capacity to reach around four million barrels per day (mb/d) by next March. Bijan Zanganeh emphasized that this would be materialized once a series of new oil development projects came on stream. The new projects, as he named, included several key fields located in West Karoun region as well as Azar and Oil Layer. Zanganeh told reporters after a cabinet meeting that Azar was already producing 15,000 barrels per day (bpd), stressing that this could increase to as much as 60,000 bpd in the near future, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported. He added that the output at Oil Layer was also at around 25,000 bpd which, as he suggested, would increase higher in the near future.
Zanganeh further emphasized that Iran’s production of condensate – a form of ultra-light oil that has found a pivotal position in Iran’s oil exports – was expected to increase as more projects in South Pars came on stream. He said Iran’s average exports of oil and condensate stood at above 2 mb/d over the Iranian year that ended on 21 March 2017. After the removal of sanctions early last year that had kept Iran’s oil production at around 2.9 mb/d since 2011, the country’s oil production started to rise by multiple hundred thousand barrels within a matter of a few months. The latest figure on Iran’s oil production that was reported by Reuters recently put the country’s average oil production after the removal of sanctions at around 2.7 mb/d.
