Iranian state media report that the country’s Oil minister Javad Owji has been taken to hospital after suffering a heart attack.

The emergency happened when Owji was attending a meeting to draft next year’s budget bill.

A source at Iran’s Oil Ministry said Owji has been under great pressure during this period to increase oil sales.

As the country is facing natural gas shortages amid the winter cold snap, Javad Owji has been at a dispatching center himself on Thursday to monitor the situation, the source has been quoted as saying.

Owji is currently under treatment at a hospital and according to the Oil Ministry-affiliated website SHANA, he is in a stable condition.

With cold weather gripping Iran in recent days and a surge in demand, shortages of natural gas have become acute.

ILNA news website reported Monday that Iran’s Oil Ministry has released the list of petrochemical units that must stop or reduce their gas consumption. In this letter, petrochemicals producers in Masjid-i Suleiman, Zagros, Shiraz, Bandar Imam, and several others must reduce their consumption.

Iran has the second largest reserves of natural gas in the world but is barely able to satisfy domestic demand as production steadily declines because of lack of investments in the oil and gas sector.