Speaking on Tuesday, Mohsen Khojastehmehr underlined the need for capital market investment in the oil industry, and said that the first working meeting at the beginning of the 13th administration should have been held with the capital market activists.”

He added: "The issue of investment in the National Iranian Oil Company is one of the priorities because the plans of this company, in addition to generating revenue, are capital-intensive; upstream projects, despite being capital-intensive, can transform the country's economy due to the good economic characteristics they have at their heart.”

The NIOC CEO said 120 years have passed since the discovery of oil in Masjed Soleiman and during this period about five billion barrels of oil worth one trillion dollars have been produced and supplied in Iran.

The CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company stated that current contract models fail to meet the interests of investors, adding: "The ecosystem of the country's economy indicates an abundance of liquidity inside, and despite these resources and the strong need to invest in oil and gas, these resources are not available, and this is a contradiction in the liquidity of the country's economy, and these conditions have severely affected the oil economy.”

Underlining the need of the oil industry to attract $160 billion in fresh investment, Khojastehmehr said: "If we want to ramp up crude oil output to 5.7 million barrels per day, we need almost $90 billion in financial resources, and if we want to increase the daily gas production capacity from one billion cubic meters per day to 1.5 bcm/d by 2026, we have to invest $70 billion.”