"I think market has reached a balanced status and will be stabilized at higher prices. After recent OPEC decision, prices started skyrocketing," Zangeneh told TV on phone on Saturday.
Providing a sketchy profile of the 171st OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, on November 30, Zangeneh boasted that contrary to all the members who will be subject to output cut decision, Iran will keep its production growing.
"Insistence and resistance in the past one year and the justification of Iran enjoying the capacity for production, output and the reality of production led the countries admit Iran's exemption to the cut rule."
Zangeneh said, "Fortunately, despite harsh political differences among the members and tensions due to stiff economic rivalry, thank Lord, we managed to gain very important result. Of course, the cornerstone for the decision had been laid in the Algeria session in October, in which the members decided OPEC output of 32.5 million barrels per day or 1.2 million barrels per day cut in the production. Of course, that time there were discussions on cooperation by the non-OPEC side as they have had very low degree of cooperation. Almost never in the OPEC history Russia has been cooperating with the OPEC. So, such concerns were prevailing."
"For many hours after reaching Vienna, we were in war of nerves, quarrel and differences in the informal sessions; media war of the parties is also usual. However, we reached agreement eventually on the production of 32.5 million barrels per day or 1.2 million barrels per day."
It was insisted that Iran should also cut its production but thanks to our reasoning and logical stances, they were convinced to exclude Iran from the decision and even allow it to raise its output level, said Zangeneh, adding that of course the approval will be valid for six months, i.e. late June 2017, and "Per the decision, we will not only have any limit for production but will also raise our production thanks to our ability to do so."
"Of course, Russia also accepted to cut its production by 300,000 barrels per day. After the phone call of President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Hassan Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia announced it will curtail its production by 300,000 barrels per day. The non-OPEC states will have one more meeting this week on production cut sharing."
"So, I think, market will experience a condition of equilibrium; of course, the price hike rate has been far from our expectation within these two days. Within the period, Brent crude price reached more than 52 dollars and the price for the OPEC basket of crude, which is our benchmark, reached 40.5 dollars a barrel: About five to six dollars increase in the price namely. God willing the prices will continue to move upward and get stabilized."
