Petroleum Africa
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Monday, April 18, 2016
The meeting to discuss a production freeze to stabilize oil prices and eventually get prices back up was scheduled to take place in Doha, Qatar between OPEC and non-OPEC producers hit a snag in the form of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Reuters, citing two sources reported that Saudi Arabia said it wanted all OPEC members to participate in the talks at the last minute, despite insisting earlier on excluding Iran because Tehran had refused to freeze production.
“The Saudis changed everything early this morning,” an OPEC source said in the Reuters report. “They want all OPEC members to join first.”
The OPEC kingpin, Saudi Arabia, wants Iran to freeze its output along with all the other OPEC members, maintaining that it would only agree to rein in its output if all other major producers, OPEC and non-OPEC, did the same. For its part Iran says it needs regain its market share now that international sanctions were lifted earlier this year.
Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, was quoted by his ministry’s news agency SHANA on April 16 as saying “We have told some OPEC and non-OPEC members like Russia that they should accept the reality of Iran’s return to the oil market.” He went on to say that if his country froze its oil production it could not benefit from the lifting of the sanctions.
A draft agreement seen by Reuters had the countries maintaining production levels seen in January. This would last until October, when the producers would meet again to reassess the situation.
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