Iran Rising

Gas for Europe, Gas for India & Pakistan...Sanctions? Israel? No Problem


The rise of Iran continues. And that rise was made abundantly clear during the 19th World Petroleum Congress in Madrid in early July.

A large, supremely confident Iranian delegation attended the triennial gathering that brings together energy officials from all over the world. The Iranian contingent in Madrid was many times larger than the one that attended the 18th World Petroleum Congress in Johannesburg in 2005. Then, the National Iranian Oil Company had a small booth in the rear of the exhibit hall in Sandton, consisting of a small sign, two tables, a handful of chairs, and a couple bowls of pistachio nuts. This year, the Iranians had a huge installation inside the sprawling Madrid Fair exhibition space near the airport. The N.I.O.C. had a glitzy raised platform of glass, plastic, and colorful placards that rivaled the scale and flash of those of other national oil companies, including China’s Sinopec and the Kuwait Petroleum Company. Indeed, the Iranians’ exhibit was immediately next to (and almost exactly the same size as) Saudi Aramco’s, the world’s biggest oil producer.

The Iranians’ confidence was fully apparent during the July 2 “ministerial session” presentation made by Gholam-Hossein Nozari, Iran’s minister of petroleum. Speaking in Farsi, Nozari said that Iran plans to increase its oil and gas output dramatically over the next few years. He claimed that by 2014, Iran’s oil output will jump to 5.3 million barrels per day, from the current 4.35 MMbbl/d. Natural gas output is projected to soar to 1.5 billion cubic meters per day, from the current 540 million cubic meters per day. The Iranians also said they would invest some $141 billion on new projects between 2005 and 2014. And the high price of oil is allowing them to finance much of that amount themselves, with some $63 billion being provided internally.

Of course, the broader question about Iran’s energy sector is not about oil or gas. It’s about nuclear power.