President Hassan Rouhani and his oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, have launched an ambitious reform program for the oil and gas industry. They are trying to roll back the dominance of the Revolutionary Guards, halt privatization, prioritize near-completion projects and attract foreign investment, according to a new brief by Brandeis University’s Nader Habibi. The Rouhani administration has also taken steps to promote fuel conservation and reduce energy subsidies. But many obstacles lie ahead for the reform plan, such as oil ministry management issues, a bloated workforce and populist political pressure. The following are excerpts from the brief with a link to the full text.
Soon after his victory in the June 2013 presidential elections, Hassan Rouhani announced that reforming and revitalizing the oil and gas sector would be one of his government’s top priorities. He and many of his aides showed no hesitation in criticizing the policies of former president Ahmadinejad toward the oil and gas industry in his two-term tenure.
Like other oil-exporting nations, Iran depends heavily on oil revenues to finance government expenditures and pay for imports. When these revenues decline, the economy suffers. A combination of international sanctions and poor domestic management led to a gradual decline in daily oil output and stagnation in natural gas output in most of the years of Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The decline accelerated in 2012 as the United States and the European Union introduced new sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and put pressure on countries that were buying hydrocarbon products from Iran. While the Ahmadinejad administration put most of the blame for this decline on sanctions, critics of his government claimed that his own policies caused more damage to the oil and gas sector than did the sanctions.
Political factions inside Iran still disagree regarding the causes of the decline, but there is no dispute about the magnitude of output loss in recent years. According to OPEC statistics (which are based on official data provided by member governments), Iran’s oil production fell from 4.3 million barrels per day (mb/d) in September 2011 to 3.3 mb/d in November 2013. Daily exports of crude oil likewise declined, from 2.7 mb/d in 2011 to just under 1 mb/d in the final months of Ahmadinejad’s presidency. Rouhani has tried to address both causes of this decline mentioned above: He is seeking to negotiate an agreement with the P5+1 group of world powers to end the international sanctions (which have disproportionately targeted Iran’s oil and gas sector), and he is reforming the country’s oil and gas industry.
Rolling Back the Dominance of the IRGC
President Rouhani has no formal authority over the Revolutionary Guards, but he has used his good relationship with the Supreme Leader to reduce the domestic economic activities of the IRGC. It appears that this initiative has been successful, as the Supreme Leader has instructed the IRGC to step aside in some areas of economic activity. In return, President Rouhani has promised to offer several large-scale construction contracts to the IRGC’s engineering arm.
Reviewing the Privatization of National Iranian Oil Company Subsidiaries
While Ahmadinejad justified many of his interventions in the oil and gas sector in the name of fighting corruption and nepotism, Zangeneh has exposed many irregularities and corrupt practices in connection with NIOC’s privatized downstream subsidiaries that were involved in refining and distributing oil and gas products. During Ahmadinejad’s presidency, oil ministry subsidiaries accounted for nearly 46 percent of all Iranian firms that were privatized through stock share offerings. Zangeneh claimed that many of these firms were sold below fair market value in corrupt dealings.
Prioritize Near-Completion Projects
In another break from the Ahmadinejad era, Zangeneh has frozen some of the oil ministry’s development projects that are in the early stages or have not gone beyond the design and planning stage, to focus on remaining active projects that are more promising and more likely to be completed by domestic firms. This policy is most evident with respect to the development of the offshore South Pars natural gas field.
Promote Fuel Conservation and Reduce Energy Subsidies
While the oil ministry has always been a strong advocate of reducing the massive price subsidies on domestic prices of refined oil and gas products, Zangeneh has intensified these efforts in recent months. These large subsidies force the oil industry to allocate an ever-growing portion of its output to domestic consumption. Furthermore, the forgone export revenues put a constraint on the oil ministry’s budget, both with respect to development projects and for the wages and benefits of its personnel.
Many Challenges Lie Ahead
The policy initiatives described above may help Iran revitalize its oil industry and increase the country’s oil and gas production, if they can be effectively implemented.
Many potential obstacles, however, stand in the way of such implementation. Internally, the oil ministry faces a productivity and personnel crisis rooted in management weaknesses and an oversized workforce.
Populist pressures can also limit the financial resources – both the oil ministry’s fiscal resources (budget) and the extent of loans and financing available from state-owned banks – available for the ministry’s maintenance and development activities, required for expanding its production capacity.
An even more significant risk factor with respect to the ambitious plans of Zangeneh is the uncertain prospects for success of the nuclear negotiations. Much of the oil ministry’s ability to boost Iran’s output depends on the outcome of these negotiations: If they fail, international oil firms will not enter the Iranian market even though the oil ministry’s new investment contracts would offer them more attractive financial incentives.
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