Iran is ready to support prolongation of the agreement
of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and
non-cartel member states on reduction of oil output, Iran's Petroleum
Minister Bijan Zangeneh said Saturday.
"If all the OPEC members or a majority of OPEC
members support this position, we will support this issue and we would
go along other countries and members," Zangeneh said, as quoted by the
Iranian Shana news agency.
He added that Tehran was seeing "positive signals" for an extension of the accord on oil production cuts.
In
November 2016, the OPEC reached the deal to cut oil production for the
first half of 2017 with the possibility of extension in order to support
global oil prices. Soon after that the accord was backed by several
non-OPEC countries, including Russia.
Despite being the OPEC member state, under the accord Iran has
obtained the right to increase its output in order to assist its economy
to recover the losses it faced under western sanctions. At the same
time within the framework of the deal, Tehran abandoned its plan
to increase its daily output up to 3.975 million barrels and agreed
to increase the production only up to to 3.79 million barrels per day.
