A senior Iranian official reported that the country's oil production capacity has returned to the level it was at before the re-imposition of sanctions in 2018, following Washington's withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Mohsen Khatam Mehr, the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company, stated that "oil production has reached pre-sanction figures, despite economic pressures," as reported by the official IRNA news agency.
Iran is currently engaged in negotiations with major powers to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement, which is expected to offer it relief from sanctions in exchange for imposing restrictions on its nuclear program. The United States, under President Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reinstated strict sanctions on Tehran, which responded the following year by gradually abandoning its commitments under the deal.
Khatam Mehr said that production has returned to the same level it was at before the sanctions, standing at 3.8 million barrels per day, after having sharply declined due to the sanctions. He added: "We are now in a position to double our exports," indicating that "from an energy security perspective, the Islamic Republic is capable of stabilizing the international arena."
The Iranian official noted that President Ebrahim Raisi's government invested $500 million to rehabilitate oil facilities and raise production to pre-sanction levels within six months. On Friday, Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji announced that oil revenues for the last fiscal year, which ended on March 20 according to the Iranian calendar, reached $18 billion, which is two and a half times higher than the previous year. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) estimated Iran's oil production at approximately 2.54 million barrels per day in its monthly report for February.
