According to IRNA, the administration of prudence and hope has reached its end and will hand over the office to the president-elect in less than 40 days. In these eight years, however, great and lasting work has been done in the oil industry, and efforts have been made to keep the lights on despite the sanctions.

One cannot help but underline the achievements made in South Pars, gas supply in rural regions, gasoline exports, numerous leaps in the petrochemical industry, connections with universities, new discoveries, etc. in these eight years; equally, one cannot turn a blind eye to the crises of the oil industry and Bijan Zangeneh in these eight years.

Iran overtakes Qatar in South Pars

One of the greatest achievements of the 11th and 12th administrations should be considered the development of the offshore South Pars gas field. Daily gas recovery from this joint field has reached more than 700 million cubic meters with the development and completion of phases 12 to 24. The figure stood at 285 mcm back in 2013.

The dream of the Iranians in equal gas recovery and then overtaking Qatar in gas extraction from this join field has been realized under Rouhani administration, but let us remember that South Pars needs an investment of nearly 30 billion dollars to continue this process and maintain production levels.

Iran’s production leap in West Karoun

The development of oil and gas fields with the priority of joint fields has always been one of the most important priorities of the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum under the Administration of “Prudence and Hope”, which has achieved great success in this field.

Crude oil production from West Karoun oil fields over the last eight years has jumped from 70,000 barrels per day in 2013 to currently 420,000 barrels, and Iran is ahead of Iraq in production from West Karoun fields.

Iran among 3 largest gas producers in the world

Increasing gas production to 1 bcm/d has been one of the goals of the Ministry of Petroleum in recent years, which was realized in the previous calendar year which ended on March 20, an output level that is tantamount to roughly 6 million barrels of oil per day.

With this increase in gas production, Iran became one of the three largest gas producers in the world. The country is currently one of the largest gas producing countries after the United States and Russia with a share of 6.1 percent.

Over 95% of population covered by gas supply network

In the last eight years, great work has been done in rural gas supply and the number of villages benefiting from the blessings of natural gas under the Rouhani administrations has increased by a factor of 2.5 from 14,000 villages in 2013 to 35,000 villages.

The increase in gas supply has caused more than 95% of the country's population to be covered by gas supply network, and liquid fuel consumption has decreased, boosting the export of petroleum products.

80% reduction in liquid fuel consumption in power plants

Increasing gas supply to power plants should also be considered as one of the most important actions of the Ministry of Petroleum under Rouhani administration; in addition to creating jobs, it has also helped to preserve the environment.

The share of liquid fuel in the fuel mix of power plants, which in 2013 was equal to 43%, ie 27 billion liters; however, now with an increase in gas production it has declined to only 10%; the value of 27 billion liters of fuel is $18 billion.

Iran, a gasoline exporters

With the completion of the Persian Gulf Star refinery and exploiting plans to optimize and improve the quantity and quality of refined products, not only did gasoline production increase, but Iran also joined the club of gasoline exporters.

The country's gasoline production has increased from 52 million liters per day in 2013 to more than 115 million liters per day and diesel production has risen from 100 million liters per day in 2013 to 120 million liters.

$25 billion petrochemical investments  

The golden age of the petrochemical industry should undoubtedly be considered as these eight years. In the 11th and 12th administrations, 32 petrochemical projects with a capacity of 34 million tons per year came on stream and the annual petrochemical production capacity rose from 56 million tons to more than 90 million tons.

The total investment in the petrochemical industry over the past eight years has been more than $25 billion.

Iran ranks first in oil, gas exploration in 2019

"Namavaran" and "Eram" are two major exploratory achievements of Iranian oil and gas industry, the discovery of which was announced in 2019. Exploration operations of the first field began in 2016 and the second in 2018. These exploratory achievements brought Iran to the first place in exploration operations in 2019.

According to Wood Mackenzie, the 2019 discoveries were twice as many as the 2018 discoveries, and the number of discoveries in 2019 was unprecedented in the last five years.

This report shows that exploration in the world is more inclined towards natural gas, as 75% of the discoveries in 2019 were dedicated to gas exploration."

With the efforts of oil industry partners, especially the hardworking staff of the National Iranian Oil Company, the first and third ranks among the 20 major oil and gas discoveries in the world were allocated to Iran; likewise, Eram gas field with extractable reserves equal to 2.7 Billion barrels has become the world's first major discovery, and the Namavaran reservoir with the extractable reserves of 2.2 billion barrels of oil is the third largest discovery in the world in 2019.

Iranian oil exports, outside of the Persian Gulf

By the tightening of the sanctions loop in 2018, the plan to transfer oil from Goreh to Jask and build its export terminal, which was emphasized from the beginning of the Rouhani administration, entered the implementation phase; a project aimed at creating a daily transport capacity of one million barrels of crude oil, storage and exporting through the new Jask terminal, ensuring the continuation of crude oil exports, decentralization of export terminals and its diversification, and sustainable development and job creation on the Makran coast.

The 1,000-kilometer Goreh-Jask pipeline was completed in early 2021, and due to the arrival of oil on the line, tankers will soon raise their anchors to export Iranian oil from the Jask terminal and bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

Communication with universities, not just in words

One of the most important actions of the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum is to connect with the universities. Signing 9 contracts with universities to study the extraction of 9 oil fields in 2014, signing 12 contracts to establish downstream research institutes in 2016, signing five research contracts in the field of operational exploration in 2017 and signing 13 research contracts in the field of extraction in 2020 are some of the important actions of Mr. Zangeneh ministry in the petroleum industry.

Trusting local manufacturers

Maximum use of homegrown production and service capacity and support for Iranian goods manufacturers in recent years has not been a slogan, and the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum has issued several instructions in this regard in recent years, the last of which was a ban on buying 70 items of oil industry with domestic similarities.

Local manufacturers also responded positively to these trusts and measures. The 1,000-kilometer Goreh-Jask pipeline was built entirely by local manufacturers and was equipped by local craftsmen. Well equipment, SRP well pumps, drilling rigs, drilling pipes, Corrosion Resistant Alloy (CRA) coiled tubing, etc. were from the family of items whose construction has been entrusted to domestic manufacturers during these years.

Create attractiveness in new contracts

The reform of the structure of oil contracts was one of the first tasks that the 11th administration put on the agenda with the aim of accelerating and improving the process of developing oil and gas fields.

Contracts that were formulated with the aim of growth of Iranian companies and the presence of local companies to carry out development and production operations in this contract model were required. The first contract in the form of this model was signed in July 2017 with the aim of developing phase 11 of South Pars between the National Iranian Oil Company with a consortium of Total, CNPC International and Petropars, followed by development contracts for Aban and West Paydar, Sepehr and Jofeir, Cheshmeh Khosh, Dalpari and East Paydar, Yaran and Parsi and Paranj fields.

No more gas flaring

Great steps have been taken under the Rouhani Administration to collect associated petroleum gases (APG). The biggest of these is the realization of the Persian Gulf Bidboland gas refinery in Behbahan with $3 billion of investment, which has 56 million cubic meters of gas inlet and provides 3.4 million tons of feed for petrochemical plants.

Gathering APG in East Karoun, construction of NGL 3200 in West Karoun, construction of NGL 3100 in Dehloran Region, gathering APG in South Pars, Khark and other fields are other measures taken by the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum in the field of APG collection.

Oil crisis; from Sanchi to sanctions

In addition to all these achievements, the oil industry was infested with many crises during these eight years. Sanchi Oil Tanker incident, Bu Ali Sina petrochemical plant’s fire, eruption of Well No. 147, the Tehran refinery fire, outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), oil price slump, OPEC pressure and withdrawal of oil market quota after JCPOA’s signing, oil exports under sanctions, opposition to the new model of oil contracts, protests against the increase in gasoline prices, dealing with the crisis of cutting gas imports from Turkmenistan in 2016, attack on Crescent case and mentioning unrealistic figures and the use of the other side, repeated actions of members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly for impeachment, dissatisfaction with the diversity of manpower contracts in the oil industry and the troublesome resolution of the 11th Assembly on the salaries of official employees of the oil industry, etc. were some of these crises.