Iran's representative to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Mohammad Ali Khatibi said here on Monday that the organization would hold an emergency meeting in Kuwait in February, Iran's state TV (IRIB) website reported.
"In the last meeting in Algeria, it was set to be held in March, however, the trend with the oil price has convinced the organization to hold the meeting one month earlier," he said, adding that "The exact date has not been fixed yet and no invitation letter has been issued to the members either."
Earlier on Sunday, Khatibi said that Iran welcomed OPEC emergency meeting in February.
"Iran welcomes an OPEC emergency meeting in February ahead of the next planned meeting in March," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
"If we could have a meeting in February, we could evaluate OPEC's January performance," Khatibi said.
As a part of OPEC's new plan, Iran will cut its crude oil output by 545,000 barrels a day in average in January.
The previous OPEC President Chakib Khelil who was replaced by Angola's Oil Minister Botelho de Vasconcelos, had said earlier that OPEC might hold an urgent meeting in Kuwait in February.
OPEC, which accounts for about 40 percent of global supply, agreed in December on a deepest-ever net cut of 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) as of Jan. 1, bringing the total output cut in 2008 to 4.2 million bpd, in another attempt to bolster sagging oil prices under the global economic slowdown.
But this decision seems to fail to curb the oil slide. OPEC officials believed that a bigger output cut is necessary.
The weekly average prices of the OPEC) rebounded slightly to 36.29 U.S. dollars per barrel last week from 34.92 dollars in the previous week due to the currently aggravated Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Vienna-based oil cartel said on Monday.
Source:Xinhua
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