Dr. Hassan Rouhani told a press conference today (Monday, December 14): “We have called on the Ministry of Petroleum to bring the country’s oil exports to 2.3 million barrels per day; an amount that can either be exported or sold on the domestic market.”

He said the pandemic had created the most difficult days and months for our people, and the government is responsible for running the country in the most difficult of circumstances.

Rouhani added: "In the first year of the administration, that is, in 2013, we achieved positive economic growth and reduced inflation to about 15 percent, and in subsequent years, the country's economic growth, despite being in the worst conditions of oil revenues, increased."

"Before the 11th administration, the country's oil revenue was about $100 billion a year, and on average in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, the years when our oil revenue was favorable, the country's oil revenue reached an average of about $52 billion," he said.

Rouhani continued: "Despite the fact that we had the lowest oil revenue in 2014 and in some months the price of a barrel of oil reached less than $30 per barrel, at the same time during seven years the best conditions in terms of reducing inflation in 2016 and 2017 were provided, and the average inflation in these three years reached roughly 11%, which was unprecedented over the last 50 years.”

He said: "In the field of gas, gasoline and diesel needed by the country, which we were previously importers, we have become self-sufficient, for the first time under the twelfth administration, our gas and sweet gas production reached one billion cubic meters per day, ie from a little more than 600 mcm, it reached one million cubic meters.”

The Iranian President also said that Iran’s production of crude oil in West Karoun oil fields cluster had reached nearly 400,000 b/d from only 70,000 b/d back in 2013.