AFP: Iran's oil minister said on Sunday that Tehran will call for an OPEC output cut of 1.5 million to two million barrels a day when the cartel meets next week, the ISNA news agency reported.
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran's oil minister said on Sunday that Tehran will call for an OPEC output cut of 1.5 million to two million barrels a day when the cartel meets next week, the ISNA news agency reported.
"Our position in the upcoming OPEC meeting in Algeria is a cut of 1.5 million to two million barrels per day in OPEC's quota output," Gholam Hossein Nozari was quoted as saying.
OPEC is due to meet on Wednesday in the Algerian city of Oran.
"With this cut, we can create a balance between supply and demand, otherwise in the first and second quarters of 2009 we will be facing oversupply," said Nozari, whose country is the cartel's second oil producer.
"This oversupply will go towards storage and in the summer of 2009 we will face more price dives," he warned.
Two weeks ago, OPEC's secretary general Abdalla Salem El-Badri said in Tehran that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries will decide on a "major" output cut in Algeria if it deems the oil market to be deteriorating.
Oil prices have taken a sharp nosedive from record highs of above 147 dollars a barrel in July to around 46 dollars on Friday.
However, they had clawed back some ground last week on signs that OPEC and the non-OPEC Russia would cooperate in Algeria in cutting production.
"In the upcoming meeting some non-OPEC nations will participate as observers," Nozari said, without elaborating.
Russia is not an OPEC member but ranks alongside Saudi Arabia, de facto leader of the cartel, as the world's largest oil exporter.
