"Under the present circumstances, the government and the Oil Ministry have not issued any policy or plan to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) towards halting the increase in the production and exports of oil," said Rokneddin Javadi, Iran’s deputy oil minister and head of the NIOC, according to Reuters.
"Currently, Iran's crude oil exports, excluding gas condensates, have reached 2 million barrels per day (bpd)," he said. "Iran's crude oil export capacity will reach 2.2 million barrels by the middle of summer," he furthered.
There has been pressure by some OPEC countries for Iran to freeze its oil output as the global glut of the product is bringing down prices. However, Iran has no interest in shoring up its oil exports as it has been excluded from the world market for so long because of sanctions brought on by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations. Sanctions on crude oil were only lifted in January of this year, and the country believes that it has a lot of catching up to do before it considers anything as rash as an oil freeze.
“Some countries that are producing above 10 million barrels per day (bpd) have called on Iran to freeze its production at one million bpd,” he said, referring to Saudi Arabia, as reported by Press TV.
“This is more like a joke that they tell us they would freeze their production above 10 million bpd and that we should also in turn freeze our production at one million bpd,” he concluded.
