Notwithstanding the looming reimposition of US sanctions against Iran's energy industry, no reduction in oil output is on the agenda.
Ali Kardor, the chief executive officer of the state-run National Iranian Oil Company, made the statement, NIOC's news portal reported on Saturday.
The official rejected fake news regarding the country’s plan to reduce crude production due to the looming sanctions, which will result in losing traditional customers.
Kardor said the country's oil production will remain constant at 3.9 million barrels per day.
According to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, the country's oil output has increased by 165,000 barrels per day in the last 10 months compared with the corresponding period of last year.
Iran is currently pumping around 3.8 million bpd of crude oil and condensates, a type of ultra-light crude. The country shipped around 777 million barrels of crude oil and 180 million barrels of condensate last year, averaging 2.62 million bpd.
Zanganeh added that if officials had not procrastinated, Iran Petroleum Contract—which was devised to attract more international companies—could have been ratified faster and more oil contracts could have been concluded with majors in which case the country's crude exports would have stood at 4 million bpd instead of 2.8 million bpd.
"Such an export volume could protect Iran against US sanctions, as the market would not be able to compensate for so many barrels," he said.
"The US was not able to impose any sanctions on Russia's oil and gas sector as its output and exports were too big for the market to be replaced by any other producer."
According to Global Data, a leading data and analytics company, crude oil production in Iran shows the region will have 66 fields producing liquid hydrocarbons by 2021, of which 38 are conventional and nine are heavy oilfields, while 19 are gas fields producing condensate.
Iran is expected to spend $13.1 billion as capital expenditure on conventional oil and $7.9 billion on heavy oil projects during 2018-21, with spending peaking in 2019 at $5.7 billion.
The average full-cycle capex per barrel of oil equivalent for Iran’s oil projects is $3.6. Onshore projects have an average full-cycle capex of $3 per barrel of oil equivalent, while shallow-water projects have an average of $5.3/boe in full-cycle capex. The average development breakeven price for oil projects in Iran is about $27.6 barrel of oil equivalent.
