US says Iran oil output and exports last year were lowest since 1981

September 3, 2021

Contrary to many private estimates saying Iranian oil output and exports rose last year, the US government says Iranian oil production in 2020 fell to the lowest level since the opening of the Iran-Iraq war in 1981.

In an analysis released August 12, the US Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the US Energy Department, said, “In 2020, Iran produced less than 2 million barrels per day of crude oil, an almost 40-year low in Iran’s production levels, according to our analysis.”

An accompanying chart, which is reproduced below, showed the last year in which production was lower than in 2020 was 1981, the first full-year of the Iran-Iraq War.

The EIA also said that exports of crude oil and condensate combined in 2020 was only 400,000 barrels a day, lower than most other estimates.  That was also a far lower level of exports than in 2013, 2014 and 2015 when the Obama Administration and the EU together heavily restricted Iranian exports with sanctions.

The EIA said that more than half of Iran’s 2020 exports went to China.

The EIA figures on production and exports are so substantially different from the numbers produced by many private firms as to raise questions.  The EIA has never, however, been accused of finagling with numbers for political reasons.

What’s more, these latest numbers were produced by the Biden Administration about the last calendar year of the Trump Administration.  Any finagling would mean the Biden Administration was trying to make the Trump Administration look good, not a logical argument.

If the EIA export figures are accurate, it means the Iranian government is under far greater economic pressure than previously imagined.