Iran's energy sector review

Iran's petrochemical products and condensate exports, which shares about a half of Iran's total exports, have decreased by 40 percent in past five months. Iran's Custom Administration released its monthly report on August 28, saying the total non-oil exports during first five months of current solar year (started on March 20) is $15.2 billion, while imports during this period reached $16.3 billion. Iran includes condensates in non-oil exports list. According to the report, Iran exported $3.1 billion worth of condensates in past five months, (averagely $620 million per month), which indicates a 14.3 percent decrease compared to the same period of last solar year. Iran exported more than $10 billion worth of condensates in a solar year which ended on March 19, 2012. This figure decreased to $8 billion during the last solar year (ended on March 20, 2013), then comparing current condensate export with the last two years, the figure shows about 26 percent plunge. On t...

The latest report of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published on August 26 assessed the proven and probable offshore oil and gas reserves of Iran in the Caspian Sea at 0.5 billion barrels and 1 trillion cubic foots (equals to 2.83 billion cubic meters) respectively. Prior to that, British Petroleum released its annual report on May, putting Iran's all proven gas reserves at 33.6 trillion cubic meters in 2012, which indicates no change compared to 2011. However, Iran announced discovering a huge oil and gas field in December 2011 after years-longed operations with Amir Kabir rig in the Caspian Sea. Iran called this field Sardar-e Jangal. EIA doesn't reject the existence of this field, but hasn't confirmed it as well, saying Iran "claims" the field holds 100 million barrels of oil and 50 tcf of gas. There have been several numbers announced by Iranian officials about the amount of oil and gas reserves on the mentioned field so far. Accor...

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has issued orders for the development of the South Pars gas field on the first day of his work. Zanganeh, who has visited South Pars, said that the priority will be placed on completing the development of the phases 12, 15, 16, 17, and 18. In March 2009, Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the incomplete Phases 9 and 10. So far, $46 billion has been invested in phases 11-24 of the gas field, but no single phase has come on stream yet. This is while that the total investment in Phases 11 to 24 of South Pars, a giant joint gas field with Qatar which holds around half of Iran's total gas reserves, had been estimated to be less than $40 billion. The five phases, which have been prioritized by the Iranian oil minister, have been developed more than other phases. Development plan of the Phase 12 started 61 months ago and has progressed by 92 percent. Development plan of the phases 15 and 16 started 73 months ago and has progre...

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...

Iranian finance and economic affairs minister Shamseddin Hosseini has said that the country's gross domestic product (GDP) is on the verge of $1 trillion, and that the country's national economy stands at 17 th  place in the world. In a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday, Hosseini said that the prospect of the national economy is promising and hopeful despite the intensified international sanctions, according to ISNA. The International Monetary Fund has said that Iran's GDP at current US$ stood at $482 billion in 2010, standing at the 25 place in the world. Iran is at the 79 th  place in terms of per GPD per capita. The World Bank also estimated that Iran's GDP in 2011 was $514.059 billion. Considering that Iran faced 1.9 percent economic contraction in 2012 and the national currency devalued by 40 percent during that year, the GDP at current US$ has even decreased below $482 billion. The GDP at current US$ is estimated by converting...