Algeria’s oil minister Noureddine Bouterfa and Mohammed Barkindo, OPEC’s new secretary-general, have been touring fellow producers in recent days, trying to raise support for a so-called production freeze-essentially putting a ceiling on output.
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Meanwhile, Gulf producers led by Saudi Arabia are insisting that for any deal OPEC members should stick to OPEC’s secondary sources data to put everyone on a level playing field, the source added.
Iranian officials have said Tehran would take part in talks on a possible production freeze after it reaches a 4 million barrel per day output, which it expects to reach in April 2017.
Saudi Arabia and Russian Federation, the world’s top two crude-oil producers, this week pledged to cooperate to stabilize global markets, while failing to announce any specific measures to bolster prices.
“Iran wants a stable market and therefore any measure that helps the stabilization of the oil market is supported by Iran”, Zanganeh said.
The American Petroleum Institute releases its weekly oil data on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT), while the government releases its report on Wednesday at 11 a.m., both delayed by Monday’s Labor Day holiday.
Trade in the dollar was choppy, turning positive against a basket of currencies by mid morning after early weakness following soft USA economic data on Tuesday.
However, it might be a tough task as those figures show Iran has already returned to pre-sanctions output levels, pumping today as much as it was pumping back in late 2011.
Also on Thursday, Iran, as well as Iraq, indicated that they would increase their respective crude productions and are not ready to freeze at their current output levels. Iran will be ready to decide on capping production once output reaches the level it was before global sanctions were imposed on the country, Mohsen Ghamsari, director for worldwide affairs at state-run National Iranian Oil Co., said in an interview in Singapore.
Iran is closer to its aspiration to produce 4 million barrels a day, the level of its output before the sanctions were imposed over its nuclear program, according to Fyfe. “The shuttle diplomacy is going on to clear which level is considered an aim for Iran”.
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This time, however, Iran has agreed to attend the meeting, which is being held on the sidelines of the International Energy Forum on September 26-28.
