His removal comes as tensions run high in the Islamic republic, with reformist challengers to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, led by Mir Hossein Mousavi, disputing the outcome of this month's elections with protests across the country.
The sudden dismissal could raise concerns that political unrest in the second-largest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries may be spilling over into the country's oil industry.
"If his removal is for political considerations, it is sad to bring in politics into the oil industry," Manouchehr Takin, an analyst covering Iran at the U.K.-based Centre for Global Energy Studies. "He was considered a 'doer', someone getting things done. He got projects moving."
A prominent political figure since Iran's 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic republic, Torkan became the first head of the country's ministry of defense and armed forces logistics in 1989.
Torkan, also a former minister of roads and transportation, headed Iran's Industrial Development & Renovation Organization, or IDRO, during the presidency of former president Mohammad Khatami.
He took on the role of deputy minister for planning in Iran's oil ministry in late 2007 after holding chief executive positions at PetroPars, an oil and gas contractor, and at Pars Oil and Gas Co., the National Iranian Oil Co. subsidiary mandated to develop the giant South Pars and North Pars gas fields.
Torkan, said the oil ministry has appointed an interim caretaker, Ebrahim Radoafzun, formerly one of five director generals working under the deputy minister for planning, until a new deputy minister is appointed.
A spokesperson from the office of press relations at Iran's oil ministry confirmed that Torkan was removed from his post on Sunday.
The front-month August light, sweet, crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading $0.20 higher at $67.70 a barrel at 1330 GMT Tuesday.
Photo : Akbar Torkan , former Iranian deputy oil minister. According to Ya Libnan sources, Torkan is related to former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani's daughter and grandchild were arrested last Saturday in Tehran over their involvement in protests against alleged election fraud in Iran. Rafsanjani, 75, heads the cleric-run Assembly of Experts, that has the power to monitor and remove the supreme leader, the country's most powerful figure (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei)