In an interview with Shana, Mohsen Khojastehmehr further said that the 13th administration was well aware of rising oil and gas production as the backbone of the country’s economic growth. He added: By keeping this reality in mind, the Petroleum Ministry put raising oil production on the agenda which resulted in higher economic growth so that half of the country’s economic growth in the past three years of the 13th administration was the result of oil sector contribution.

He said: In the international scene, while the country was faced with cruel sanctions, we used Resistant Economy as a guideline and turned it from a slogan into action, and at the same time, we adapted ourselves to the international environment and tried to benefit from its potential to achieve our goals.

When we look back to the economic indexes over the three past years, the figures show a consistent trend of rising economic growth, Khojastehmehr said.

Replying to a question on rising oil production and oil revenues driven from it, the NIOC’s managing director said that during the past 3 years of the 13th administration, Iran’s oil production has risen by an unprecedented figure of 70 percent which is the result of a good understanding of the impact of boosting production in the oil sector on the country’s economic growth.

He noted that the 13th administration did not confine itself to just boosting oil production. Still, it pursued raising oil exports and oil revenues as the next steps so that oil revenues which stood at below 10 billion dollars at the end year of the previous administration, reached 36 billion dollars last year, a nearly 300 percent rise when compared with the previous administration’s oil revenues.

Pointing to the Petroleum Ministry’s performance in the gas sector, he said that boosting pressure was the most important step taken in the South Pars gas field with signing contracts worth 20 billion dollars.

“In total, as much as 22.5 billion dollars of contracts have been signed for the development of the oil and gas fields of the country during the past three years which is remarkable in comparison with 8 years of the previous administration in office which stood at 13 million dollars”, he said adding it implies that the 13th administration has concluded contracts worth 9 billion dollars annually, nearly six times more than the previous administration, led by president Hassan Rohani from 2013 to 2021.

He continued: When 20 billion dollars of investment in boosting pressure projects is realized, natural gas and gas condensate extraction from the South Pars gas field will rise by 90 trillion cubic feet and 3 billion barrels respectively which will raise the country’s earnings by 900 billion dollars.