Deputy oil minister has stressed the need to merge oil ministry with the energy ministry (responsible for the regulation and implementation of policies applicable to electricity, water and wastewater services).
Mansoor Moazzami said on Monday the management of the country’s energy sector should be integrated in order to enable policy-makers to move towards optimizing energy consumption as well as efficiently distributing energy across the country.
The proposition to merge the current energy ministry with oil ministry and even the atomic energy organization and form a bigger energy ministry has a decades-long history.
During his tenure, former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also justified such a merger based on the article 53 of the 5th Five-year Economic Development Plan.
In 2011, Ahmadinejad’s decision to merge the ministries sparked tension between his administration and the parliament. He decided to merge the Industries and Mines Ministry with the Commerce Ministry, and attempted to merge several other ministries, but the parliament only approved the creation of Industry, Mine and Trade.
Back then, the decision was announced as part of a plan to “slim down the number of ministries from 21 to 17”, which the government said would produce “a more streamlined, efficient administration”.
The Oil Ministry in Iran handles all aspects of the oil and gas industry, including direct control of production and general oversight of the National Iranian Oil Company, which sells Iran’s fossil fuel around the world.
