Iran’s oil minister has big plans for likely last term
Having begun yet another — and likely his last — term as Iran’s minister of petroleum, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh faces surmountable challenges in pushing the country’s energy sector into the 21st century.
Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, the most experienced minister in the Islamic Republic of Iran, has yet again been entrusted with one of the most challenging portfolios in the Hassan Rouhani administration: the Ministry of Petroleum (MoP). Experts agree that in the past four years, Zanganeh and his team have managed to rehabilitate the petroleum sector after the damaging years under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s (2005-2013) trial and error mentality and external sanctions. Now, Zanganeh and the MoP have new ambitions in the next four years, which will most probably be his final term as petroleum minister.
In his presentation to parliament prior to his latest vote of confidence in early August, Zanganeh outlined the following plans for the non-gas subsectors in the next four years:
