Iran's energy sector review

Newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rohani's 15 of 18 nominees for ministries won approval of the country's parliament on August 15. For first time in Iran's 34-year Islamic Republic history, a nominee hit the record in terms of collecting the most of votes. 96.5 percent of members of parliament voted in favor of Rohani's choice for Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, Ali Tayyebnia. Nominee for Energy minister, Hamid Chitchian also secured 95.7 percent of MPs' votes, while five choices of Rohani, including Minister of Health and Medical Education, Hassan Hashemi won above 90 percent of votes. Five other nominees could hit the record of their precedes' gathered the most votes from MPs during last 34 year as well. Even Rohani's nominees for more sensitive posts, namely Foreign Ministry and Oil Ministry, whom have been criticized and protested seriously by majority principalist MPs, could gain approval of parliament. It seems Iranian parliament approve...

Mohammad Ali Khatibi, Iran 's governor for OPEC, who serves as the National Iranian Oil Company’s director for international affairs, says that despite the international sanctions, exports of crude oil, gas condensates, and oil products are above the amounts which have been targeted by the national budget law. On Monday, he told Fars News Agency that crude oil and gas condensate exports are close to the figures which have been stipulated in the current year’s national budget law. "If we add exports of oil products to exports of crude oil and gas condensates, the figure will be higher than the budget law’s figure," he said. Although he did not provide any specific figure about crude oil exports, but the current year’s budget law has set the target of exporting 1.3 million barrels per day. It should be mentioned that exports of gas condensates and oil products (diesel fuel, furnace oil, etc) are not mentioned in the budget law. Such products are sold by pri...

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has increased its crude oil production by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), while OPEC has announced that the demand for OPEC oil has decreased. In its latest report released on August 10 OPEC put its July output at 30.308 mbpd, which was 97,000 bpd less than the output a month ago. However, it is still 308,000 bpd above the organization's ceiling production. Saudi Arabia produced around 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil in July, up from 9.6 million bpd in June, an industry source told Reuters on August 11. Saudi Arabia supplied a total of 9.99 million bpd to the domestic and export markets, the report quoted him as saying. Saudi Arabia supplied around 9.6 million bpd to the market in May and 9.3 million bpd in April. Two industry sources also told Reuters last month that Saudi Aramco plans to increase capacity at two oilfields by a total of 550,000 barrels per day by 2017 to take strain off the world's largest conventional oilfield. Iraq and Lib...