ANKARA: A meeting between Opec Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo and Iran’s oil minister to discuss global oil market conditions and crude prices has started in Tehran, the ministry’s official website reported on Tuesday.
“The meeting between the Opec official and Minister (Bijan) Zanganeh started a few minutes ago. Barkindo arrived in Tehran on Monday night,” SHANA, the ministry’s information service, said.
Members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet on the sidelines of the International Energy Forum (IEF), which groups producers and consumers, in Algeria on September 26-28.
They are expected to seek to revive a global deal to stabilise oil output levels. Non-Opec member Russia, the world’s top oil producer, is also expected to attend the IEF.
Hit by global oversupply, oil prices collapsed to as low as $27 per barrel earlier this year from as high as $115 in mid-2014, but have since recovered to around $47.
Attempts by Opec and non-Opec oil exporters to reach a pact on freezing output earlier this year floundered because Iran, Opec’s third-largest producer, declined to participate.
Iran has said it would cooperate in talks to freeze output only if fellow exporters recognised its right to regain market share after the lifting of international sanctions in January under a nuclear deal with six major powers.
A senior Iranian official said on Monday Iran was ready to raise its output to four million barrels per day in a couple of months depending on market demand.
Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed on Monday to set up a task force to review oil market fundamentals and to recommend measures and actions that would secure market stability.
