While Iran enjoys the world's fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the world's second-largest natural gas reserves, its production and export potential has remained largely unutilized as a result of the nuclear related sanctions. The sanctions have had a major impact on Iran's energy industry and have caused a number of cancellations or delays in its oil and gas upstream projects.

Iran's deputy oil minister for commerce and international affairs, Hossein Zamaninia, said Tehran had identified nearly 50 oil and gas projects worth $185 billion that it hoped to sign by 2020.

Iran, which holds the world’s largest gas reserves, was aiming to double its gas production in the next 30 months and to raise its share of global cross-border gas trade from a minuscule one per cent at present to ten per cent at some unspecified future date. In production terms, this means increasing output from 172.6 bcm in 2014 (five per cent of the total world output) to around 350 bcm in 2018-19.