Iran hails OPEC compliance with output cuts
Iran has described OPEC’s level of compliance with production cuts in January as satisfactory with the country’s oil minister saying he expects more cooperation – not only from OPEC member states but also non-member producers - to cut output and help stabilize the market.
"OPEC members' level of compliance to cut oil production in January has been acceptable and we predict more cooperation from the non-OPEC members in near future," Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.
He added that Iran's level of production has reached 3.9 million bpd in February, Reuters reported.
Back in December, OPEC clinched a historic deal with Russia and other non-members to slash global production by nearly 1.8 million barrels a day for six months starting January.
OPEC – in its first production deal in eight years - exempted key member Iran from cutting output, allowing the country to increase its crude production by 90,000 bpd to reach pre-sanction output levels of 4 million bpd.
Nigeria and Libya were also exempted from the planned output cut due to internal conflicts which have already decreased their crude production.
In early January, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) announced that the country’s oil production had neared four million barrels per day (mb/d).
Gholam-Reza Manouchehri, NIOC’s deputy for development and engineering affairs, was quoted by media as saying that Iran was already on the way to make a stronger oil market recovery, emphasizing that this would be expedited through the development of several key projects within the next few years.