Speaking at a ceremony to commemorate the memory of Ayatollah Raisi; the minister of petroleum said that over less than three years that Raisi headed the 13th administration many efforts were made by the oil industry to achieve the status it deserves.

As far as environmental issues are concerned, the late president insisted that the petroleum ministry should do its best to gather associated gases, halting gas flares, Owji said.

According to him, Ibrahim Raisi visited oil industry installations at least 10 times during his nearly 3 years in office and visited the petroleum ministry headquarters 4 times, pursuing the oil industry projects on a weekly basis, being fully aware of oil industry developments.

During his visits to the oil-rich southern provinces of Bushehr and Khuzestan, the late president got worried when he saw burning gases of flares, insisting on accelerating gathering gases so that their damage to environment comes to a halt, the minister of petroleum said, adding based on an ongoing plan, nearly all gas flares will be removed in the next two years.

Out of 300 half-finished and new projects, 113 projects, worth 30 billion dollars, became operational over the last three years, which resulted in rising oil production between 50 to 60 percent, doubling oil exports and gas condensates as well as rising rising production of gas, oil products and petrochemicals, the minister said.

Javad Owji said that Antony Blinken, the U.S secretary state, confessed that Biden administration had applied more than 600 cases of sanctions against Iran, all of them ineffective.

Ted Cruiz, the U.S senator for Texas said recently that the U.S foreign policy of the Biden administration has been the “worst foreign policy of the country in modern time” calling it a “disaster” due to failure to curb Iran’s oil exports and ineffectiveness of sanctions.

The republican senator made a comparison between the figures related to Iran’s oil exports since the Biden administration took office in January 2021 and now and tried to convince the U.S secretary of state that the U.S foreign policy in view of maintaining sanctions has been a complete failure.

He told the U.S secretary of state that while Iran’s oil exports stood at 300 thousand barrels per day four years ago, now it has reached about 2 million barrels per day, implying unsuccessful implementation of the imposed sanctions. 

“You saw that the U.S secretary of state told the republican senator that Washington had applied about 600 sanctions against Iran but Iranians have been working hard to do what they want and they have been able to find a new way to get around new sanctions.” Owji told the gathering.

Iranian president, Ibrahim Raise lost his life during a chopper crash on May 19. He was returning from a dam opening ceremony which has been built on Aras River along the common border between Iran and the Azerbaijan Republic. On his way back to Tabriz to inaugurate a number of oil refining projects at Tabriz oil refinery, his chopper crashed in a mountainous area in the northwest province of East Azerbaijan, where he and seven other onboard passengers lost their lives.