Oil Minister: Oil and gas sector grows 6.2% despite lack of financial resources

According to Energy Press, Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said in today’s open session of the parliament during the review of the government’s one-year performance in implementing the Seventh Development Plan: “In order to implement the plan, first, with the full cooperation and coordination of the executive and financial supervisors who were introduced by the Supreme Council for the Program’s Steering and the specialized roles of the National Planning and Budget Organization, the operational plan and annual breakdown of quantitative objectives were formulated and the relevant tasks were classified in the form of 26 major projects and communicated to their executors in the operational and staff bodies of the ministry.” He continued: “In the Seventh Development Plan, the Ministry of Oil was assigned the responsibility of formulating 8 executive regulations, all of which were prepared within the required timeframe and approved by the Cabinet. Regarding the other 14 regulations, they were prepared in cooperation with other agencies and are in the process of obtaining approval from the Cabinet.” The Oil Minister, explaining a report on the performance of the Ministry of Oil in relation to the provisions and tasks stipulated in the Seventh Development Plan, said: “The law has envisaged a program to achieve 9 percent growth for the oil sector.” Despite the fact that only 22 percent of the financial resources were realized in 1403, according to the Statistics Center of Iran, the growth in the added value of the country’s oil and gas extraction was 6.2 percent, which is higher than the country’s 3 percent economic growth in 1403.
Paknejad said: “In the first six months of 1404, the quantity and rate of the country’s crude oil and condensate exports have grown significantly compared to the same period in 1403. However, due to the decrease in international oil price indices, the projected income from part of these sales was not realized.”
The Minister of Oil added: “According to the provisions of paragraph (b) of Article (14), an oil and gas investment account has been established and in 1403, more than 49 million hemat were deposited into this account by national oil and gas companies. All the deposited amounts have been allocated to the implementation of oil industry projects, although this amount is much less than the actual needs of the industry.”
He added: “A portion of these resources, before being deposited into the investment account, was withdrawn by the Tax Affairs Organization or to provide resources for the Subsidies Targeting Organization, which is about 51 hemts.” So far this year, more than 56 hemts have been deposited into this account and used in priority investment projects in the oil industry. It is estimated that this figure will reach about 90 hemts by the end of this year.” Paknejad said: “In implementing the ruling of paragraph (b) of Article (15) and in order to compensate for the imbalance and supply gas to the country’s industries, a total of 24 oil fields and 34 gas fields have been introduced to applicant companies and investors. Regarding the supply of industrial gas and electricity, after the approval of the executive regulations of Note 3, paragraph (f) of Article (15), 4 development contracts have been concluded with domestic qualified companies, with the aim of producing about 32 million cubic meters of raw gas, equivalent to 3 percent of the country’s production capacity, and 78 thousand barrels of crude oil, equivalent to about 4 percent of the country’s crude oil production capacity.”