Iran said Saturday that it will pursue a fair oil price at the upcoming meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), local English-language Press TV satellite channel reported.
Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari made the remarks before leaving for the OPEC meeting scheduled to be held in Vienna on Tuesday, or Sept. 9, according to the report.
Iran, the second largest oil producer in the OPEC, is seeking a fair oil price as costs of oil production have increased nearly 25-30 percent while oil exporting countries face declining prices, Nozari was quoted as saying.
Nozari said if the current declining trend in oil prices continues, it will paralyze some producers due to the high cost of maintaining oil production facilities.
Earlier on Tuesday, Nozari said that the OPEC should control the excess of oil supply to the market, adding that Saudi Arabia and some other OPEC members have excess supply and this has affected the oil price in the market.
Oil prices have dropped from the record high of 147.27 U.S. dollars a barrel on July 11 to 106.5 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange this Friday due to an increase in Saudi Arabia's output and a fall in the world's demand for oil.
Though the OPEC had made a decision to maintain crude output levels, Saudi Arabia said in June that it would raise production from 9.45 million barrels per day (bpd) to 9.7 million bpd, the kingdom's highest level since 1981.
OPEC ministers will meet in Vienna on Sept. 9 to review the organization's output policy. Ongoing quota violations are also expected to be high on the agenda of the summit.
Source: Xinhua
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