Zanganeh said Wednesday that a production cap would be “no benefit” for Iran, which only returned to world oil markets after Global sanctions linked to its nuclear programme were lifted in January.
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West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark that has soared nearly 90 per cent since its low for the year, was trading just above $49. He also called Iran a “key member” of OPEC and pledged Saudi Arabia will “cooperate with all” member countries.
Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh says Iran will continue to ramp up oil production until it returns to levels before sanctions cut its exports. Earlier today militants said they’d launched attacks on two oil pipelines in the Niger Delta.
Brent crude oil futures rose 11 cents at $49.83 a barrel, while the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures edged up 12 cents at $49.13 a barrel, Reuters reported. “(OPEC) delegates are unlikely to be forced into extreme action”, Kapadia said.
“Since January 20, oil prices have nearly doubled from near $26 per barrel to nearly $50 per barrel, at the same time total OPEC production has increased by around 100,000 bpd, despite heavy outages in Nigeria”, BMI Research said. OPEC output now is estimated at 32 million barrels per day, roughly a third of the world s oil.
The managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mohammed Barkindo, was elected as the new secretary general of OPEC on Thursday during the meeting.
The cartel controls more than one-third of the world’s oil, and previously was able to keep prices high by agreeing to limit production.
That ended years of dispute between rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, which had put forward their own candidates and refused to agree on a compromise. “With oil prices having rallied considerably since the abysmal start to the year”.
The country’s energy minister, Khalid Al-Falih, said: “We will be very gentle in our approach and make sure we don’t shock the market in anyway”. He insisted Tehran deserved a quota – based on historic output levels – of 14.5 percent of Opec’s overall production. “Certainly we will not go with certain price targets”, he said.
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Until December 2015, OPEC had a ceiling of 30 million barrels per day (bpd) – in place since December 2011, although it effectively abandoned individual production quotas years ago.
