Iran’s oil and gas output has ramped up over the past three months, Deputy Oil Minister Hamid Bovard said on December 18, as the country is poised to face heightened pressure under a second Trump administration.

“In the past three months, we have seen a satisfactory increase in both crude oil and natural gas production,” Bovard was quoted as saying by Shana News Agency.

During this period, crude oil production soared by between 70,000 to 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) while natural gas extraction saw a rise of up to 70mn cubic metres (mcm),” he added.

The last time Iran released figures on crude oil production was in August, when Mohsen Paknejad, who was trying to secure a parliamentary vote of confidence to become oil minister, said the country was pumping 3.4mn bpd.

At the time, Paknejad promised to ratchet up output by 400,000 bpd in a year.

Iran’s natural gas extraction, mainly from South Pars, the world’s largest gas field, which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf, stands at 1.07bn cubic metres per day.

According to the Oil Ministry, nearly 860mn mcm of extracted gas are injected into the national grid after purification.

The boost in oil and gas production comes as the US is expected to further crack down on Iran’s oil exports under incoming President Donald Trump, who is set to take office on January 20, 2025.

 Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, on December 11 vowed a return to the so-called “maximum pressure” campaign to curb Iranian revenues.

“We have to constrain their oil. We have to go back to maximum pressure, number one, which was working under the first Trump administration,” Waltz told Fox News.

Recent data provided by consultancy HedgePoint Global Markets and the analytics group Kpler suggest that Iran’s crude exports to China, most probably the one and only buyer of Iranian oil now, have taken a tumble in the wake of fresh US sanctions targeting dozens of ships and companies involved in the “illegal” trade.      

HedgePoint trading chief Kim Benni shared a chart on his X account over the weekend showing that recent US sanctions pushed Iran’s daily exports of crude to China below 600,000 barrels last month, the lowest since December 2022.

Kpler put the figure for November at 1.31mn bpd and attributed the 524,000 barrel-per-day drop from the previous month to geopolitical tensions, a growing energy shortage in Iran, and transport challenges from tougher US sanctions.

Iran’s oil sales to China have averaged 1.4mn bpd this year.

The Iranian oil minister on December 18 rejected the slowdown in the country’s oil export as a “psychological campaign” launched by the enemies.

“Reports suggesting difficulties in oil sales are only rumours circulating in social media,” Paknejad told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Tehran.

“We now have no issues whatsoever in the sale of oil and we have devised measures to ensure that we will face the least possible challenges in the future,” he added, referring to the possible additional US sanctions.

Before the United States targeted Iran’s petroleum industry in 2018 under Trump, the country was producing more than 3.8mn bpd and exporting around 2.2mn bpd. The sanctions drove production down to 2.2mn bpd and sales to a record low of 200,000 bpd.

However, with President Joe Biden taking office in the US in 2020, Iranian oil sales began to bounce back as Washington turned a blind eye to the trade.