Iran’s oil output has jumped to the highest in nearly five years, to 3.1 million barrels per day (bpd), a member of the energy committee at the Iranian Parliament was quoted as saying this weekend.
Iran has boosted output by nearly 1 million bpd since President Ebrahim Raisi took office in August 2021. Iranian oil production increased from 2.2 million bpd back then to 3.1 million now, Hossein Hosseinzadeh, a member of the energy committee at the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, told Iranian news agency IRNA.
According to estimates by Argus, the last time Iran produced that much oil was in October 2018.
That was the year in which then-U.S. President Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports after withdrawing the United States from the nuclear deal.
Despite the sanctions, Iran has continued to export oil, in lower quantities, mostly to China.
Per OPEC’s secondary sources in its latest Monthly Oil Market Report, Iranian crude oil production stood at 2.754 million bpd in June, up by 56,000 bpd compared to May, and higher than the 2022 average of 2.554 million bpd. Iran itself has not reported production figures to OPEC since the U.S. sanctions on its oil industry returned in 2018.
The higher production in recent months has been supported by stronger Iranian exports to China, Venezuela, and Syria.
Amid intensified competition for Russian crude, private Chinese refiners have been buying increasing volumes of Iranian crude as competition for Russian oil from China's major state-held refiners and from Indian buyers has made Moscow's barrels relatively more expensive, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.
More recently, Iran’s crude and condensate exports in the second quarter of this year averaged 1.35 million bpd, up by 300,000 bpd from the previous quarter and an increase of 350,000 bpd compared to the 2022 average, per data from Vortexa. The Iranian oil exports in Q2 were the highest quarterly shipments since the U.S. sanctions came into effect at the end of 2018, Armen Azizian, Crude Market Analyst at Vortexa, wrote early this month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com