“According to the statistics of future research institutes of reputable companies in the world, crude oil in the future will turn from a strategic commodity into a common commodity, in other words, the golden and attractive era of selling oil is now, not the future,” said Reza Dehghan at the first national conference on enhancing the productivity of oil and gas wells at the specialized conference center of NIOC on Wednesday.

He said more than 110 years of oil and gas production in Iran has been going on and in these years this industry has been accompanied by many ups and downs. Unfortunately, in the last few decades, due to various reasons, including imposed war, international sanctions and internal administrative paperwork, the speed of development of this industry has slowed down.

The NIOC official said: “According to the latest annual statistical report of BP, in 2022, with 156 billion barrels of oil in place (9% of the world's oil resources), after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada, Iran will be the world’s 4th biggest owner of oil reserves, but with the production of eight percent of the world's crude oil, our country is the world’s 8th largest producer of the item.”

He said that more than half of the world's crude oil reserves have been produced, adding: So far, after 110 years, Iran has recovered only a little more than a third of its oil reserves. In other words, Iran has not been able to produce more than 4 million barrels of oil per day on average during the last five decades.”

Dehghan clarified: “All the big companies in the world such as Mackenzie, Chevron, BP and Totalenergies have future research institutes. According to some charts in the statistics of these institutes, the demand for crude oil will decrease by 2050, in other words, in the future, we will have reservoirs that will never be taken from and will be abandoned.”