Iran to ask OPEC to keep 'current' oil output target in Dec: minister

Iran will ask OPEC to maintain its previous crude output target when the oil producer group meets on December 14 in Vienna in a bid to sustain oil prices at current "fair" levels, oil minister Rostam Ghasemi said Tuesday.

"Iran will call for retaining the current production ceiling at the next OPEC meeting in order to preserve a fair oil price," Ghasemi was quoted as saying by oil ministry news service Shana.

"Iran, as OPEC president, will support maintaining the production ceiling at the next meeting," he said, adding: "If the current production ceiling is retained, the oil price, which is fair, will not change."

Ghasemi, a former head of Khatam al-Anbiya, the construction arm of the revolutionary guards, said Iran supported "retaining the production ceiling and complying with quotas because this is in the interest of both consumers and producers."

OPEC's most recent meeting, on June 8, failed to reach agreement on production levels for the second half of this year and OPEC's Gulf Arab members regard the previous output target of 24.845 million b/d as redundant.

That target, which covered 11 members but not quota-exempt Iraq, came into force in January 2009 when OPEC was trying to slash production in response to plunging oil prices and a deepening global recession.

OPEC production has climbed steadily this year alongside rising oil prices and the loss of Libyan oil supply due to the outbreak of civil war there, and is independently estimated to be above 30 million b/d.

The benchmark front-month ICE Brent crude contract, which traded at a two-and-a-half-year high of $127.02/barrel in April, slipped below $100/b earlier Tuesday.

--Staff, newsdesk@platts.com  eklavya_gupte@platts.com

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