Ghalibaf: With 'First Place' in Oil and Gas, Why Should We Have Imbalances?

The Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, claimed that Iran holds the first rank in oil and gas reserves globally and criticized the energy imbalances and outages in the country, questioning why such issues persist today. On Saturday, December 22, he continued, "What convincing answer do we have to give to a 20-year-old regarding these imbalances? When we provide answers, they tell us, 'Then why don’t you implement these responses?'" Iran's gas reserves are 33 trillion cubic meters, ranking second in the world after Russia, while its oil reserves stand at 157 billion barrels, placing it fourth globally. Ghalibaf's astonishment at electricity outages and energy imbalances comes at a time when Iran has only achieved half of its electricity production growth targets since 2011, and the average growth rate of gas production has fallen from 5% over the past decade to 2% in the last three years. A report from the Parliament Research Center indicates that total annual investments in oil and gas production in recent years have only been $3 billion, which is half of the early years of the last decade and one-sixth of the 1990s. Iran has not launched any new oil refineries in the past five years, with six of the ten existing refineries established before the revolution, leading to increasing imbalances in gasoline and diesel. While Iran has accepted hundreds of billions of dollars in losses from sanctions over the past two decades under the pretext of wanting to produce nuclear electricity, the Bushehr power plant, Iran's only nuclear facility, has generated about 70 terawatt-hours of electricity in over a decade, worth barely $6 billion, and it is unclear if the value of its electricity production has surpassed the construction costs. Ghalibaf further claimed that the seventh development plan was formulated with "collective wisdom and attention to the realities of the country and past development plans." The seventh development plan will be implemented from the beginning of 2024 until the end of 2027, aiming for an annual economic growth rate of 8%, while the International Monetary Fund predicts that Iran's economic growth will continuously decline to 2% over the next five years. Ghalibaf also stated, "I do not say the seventh plan is flawless, including that we do not know if we will achieve 8% economic growth, but we can create wealth through productivity."