Iran wants to pump more oil than it did before the Trump administration tightened sanctions, a top official said ahead of high-level nuclear talks whose outcome would directly impact the country’s energy-market ambitions.
“Plans are in place to increase oil output to more than five million barrels a day,” said Mohsen Khojastehmehr, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company, the state-run news agency IRNA reported.
He provided no details or time frame for the target.
Iran’s daily production capacity is set to reach four million barrels by March, the end of the current Iranian calendar year, Bloomberg quoted Khojastehmehr as saying.
Iran pumped around the same amount of crude before former US President Donald Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal in and reimposed tough economic sanctions that also targeted the nation’s energy sectors.
Iran hasn’t been close to its peak crude output level of 6 million barrels since the 1970s.
