In an interview with the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations website, Seyyed Mehdi Hosseini said: In general, Iraq has always produced half of Iran’s oil, which is very important in terms of security and economy. This amount of oil production is acceptable for Iraq, which has half the population of Iran and does not have Iran’s economic and commercial infrastructure. Still, if Iraq were to produce more oil than Iran, which has been the case in the past few years, it could change this country’s political position and economy.

The senior expert in the energy field said: Another characteristic of oil investment is that political and security stability must be established in the investing country so that the investment can be assured. The investor can regain the principal of his capital and profit so that he is not affected by crises. Meantime, the politics of the investing country should not suffer. In the last ten years, Iraq began to attract capital, and in the first step, an American company designed a model of oil contracts for them to attract oil companies within that framework. After that, numerous international tenders were held in Iraq.

He continued: Iraq contracted the so-called Brownfield reservoirs, which were producing oil and could make more capacity, to foreign investors, such as the Ramila field and some common fields with Iran, including the Azadegan and Majnoon fields. With this approach and the entry of large international oil companies into Iraq, experts predicted that the daily oil production in Iraq would reach 12 million barrels daily.

Hosseini stated: Of course, the Iraqis themselves believed that 12 million barrels per day could not be realized considering the political, economic, and technological conditions of Iraq. Finally, they focused on 6 to 7 million barrels per day, which can be justified by Iraq’s planning for the production and participation of foreign capital.

This senior expert in the field of energy stated that Iraq has obstacles and problems reaching the same level of production and said: In the Brownfields, it is necessary to inject a large amount of gas or water into the field. In some fields, this is done by injecting gas, and in some fields, by injecting water. Iraq faced limitations in both cases, but in the end, they found solutions to using Persian Gulf water.

He emphasized that Iraq started increasing its oil production with great effort, coordination, and consensus among political factions, and they had a solid and serious will to do this. They strongly concluded that foreign capital and technology were necessary for this work, so they prepared the work in political, security, and economic terms. Today, Iraq produces nearly 5 million barrels per day, and if this trend continues, it is possible to reach 6 million barrels per day.

Hosseini said that Iraq has also recently moved towards attracting more international oil companies that are not interested in Brownfield contracts and prefer to have production participation contracts, as today, production participation contracts are being concluded in the Kurdish region. Therefore, with flexibility in the contract model and the entry of foreign companies to invest and participate in development and exploration operations, it is possible to reach the production of 6 million barrels per day.

This senior expert in the energy field noted the impact of this issue on Iran: Anyway, this issue will improve Iraq’s position in OPEC. OPEC has an important position in terms of political and oil supply and demand and oil pricing, and it is necessary to maintain Iran’s position in this organization at a high level. One of the results of Iraq’s oil policies is the promotion of this country’s position in OPEC and economic growth and development.

He said Iran has the capacity to increase its oil production, and even compared to countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, this is possible for Iran. Iran’s known oil reserves are about 600 billion barrels, and in today’s world technology, it is possible to harvest about 150 billion barrels or 23% of oil, and the rest remains unusable underground. Meanwhile, Russia only has 100 billion barrels, but with modern technology, it produces 10 million barrels of oil daily. Iran should not lag behind others in its daily oil production.