Pezeshkian accepts Paknejad's resignation and names Bovard acting oil minister

President Masoud Pezeshkian accepted Mohsen Paknejad's resignation as oil minister and appointed Hamid Bovard acting minister, the oil ministry's Shana service reported on Monday. The decree cites Article 135 of the constitution. Bovard has run the National Iranian Oil Company since September 2024. He keeps that operating job in view while he holds the ministry on a caretaker basis.

Paknejad took the portfolio on 21 August 2024, the date Shana gives as 31 Mordad 1403, after parliament confirmed him with 222 votes. He has now left after a little over two years. The National, citing officials, said he had submitted the resignation some time ago for personal reasons and had insisted on leaving. Pezeshkian's office accepted it on Sunday. Shana did not publish a resignation letter or a parliamentary timetable for a permanent successor. Under Article 135, an acting minister can run the department while the president sends a new name to the Majlis. No name has been sent.

Bovard was born in the Iranian year 1343, which runs from March 1964 to March 1965. The National gives his age as 62. His record inside the industry is operational rather than political. He has been chief executive of Maroun Oil and Gas Production Company, of the National Iranian South Oil Company, of Iranian Oil Exploration Operations Company, and of Iranian Offshore Oil Company. The then oil minister named him deputy minister and NIOC chief in Shahrivar 1403, September 2024. That is the job he still holds on paper as he walks into the ministry.

On Monday he sat with the council of the oil minister's deputies and thanked Paknejad for two years of work. IRNA, quoting the ministry, reported his line to the deputies: the production and development programmes continue, with the same emphasis on consensus that the 14th government has used as a slogan. He did not give a new export figure, a new refinery schedule, or a date for a permanent appointment. The caretaker's first public act was continuity, not a change of plan.

The continuity claim lands in a ministry that has lost its normal route to market. The National reported that a US naval blockade has pushed crude exports to zero, a figure it attributed to the country's central bank chief in an earlier statement. Paknejad had said, before he resigned, that money from oil already sold was still reaching Iran. Those are two different claims. One is about barrels leaving Iranian terminals. The other is about cash from barrels that left earlier. Bovard inherits both problems: a shipping constraint he does not control, and a revenue line that depends on cargoes already loaded.

The Strait of Hormuz remains shut on Iran's own terms, a separate decision from this resignation. Parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on Sunday that the strait stays closed until Washington meets seven conditions in the June Islamabad memorandum. Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has said a Tehran plan could reopen it in seven days if Washington accepted the plan. Bovard does not set that policy. He does have to run a company whose main export terminal, Kharg, loads into waters the government itself has closed to ordinary traffic. An acting minister who promises that development programmes continue is promising engineering work, not a restored export route.

The domestic side of the job is fuel, not just crude. The National described shortages at home coinciding with the export stop. A ministry that cannot move crude also has less feedstock certainty for refineries, and less hard currency for imports if a gap opens in petrol or diesel. Paknejad's last public line, that revenue from oil already sold was still arriving, was an attempt to separate the treasury from the blockade. Bovard did not repeat that line on Monday. He talked about production and development. The distinction matters for anyone reading the decree as a change of strategy. The decree is a change of name. The programmes he named are the ones already on the books.

Parliament's role comes next, and it is not automatic. The 222 votes that installed Paknejad in August 2024 were a comfortable majority in the 14th Majlis. A successor needs a fresh vote. Until that vote, Article 135 is the authority Bovard has. It is an acting appointment, not a confirmation. He can sign the ordinary papers of the ministry. He cannot treat the post as settled. Pezeshkian has not said when he will send a name. Shana's text of the decree asks for success in the assigned duties and stops there.

The practical question for the next fortnight is narrower than the politics of the resignation. Kharg and the other loading points need an instruction on which cargoes, if any, can move while the strait is shut and a US blockade is in place. Refineries need a feedstock plan if exports stay at the level the central bank described. Bovard told his deputies the old programmes continue. The papers he signs this week will show whether that sentence covers only field work, or whether it also covers an attempt to move crude.