Iran to Raise Oil Market Share Steadily: Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior Iranian oil official said the rise in the country’s crude oil exports after removal of anti-Tehran sanctions will be steady and depend on future global oil demand.
"The decision on the amount of exports highly depends on the future condition of the market. We will raise our market quota steadily," said Mohsen Qamsari, director general for international affairs of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Reuters reported.
"We will adjust our output to the global market's demand," he told Iran's oil ministry news agency Shana on Saturday.
"We will exercise great caution to prevent a further decline in international prices and will adopt certain methods and strategies to this end," he added.
Qamsari also said one of the methods to ensure the country's oil sale is buying refineries in other countries but this has to be approved by the administration and the parliament.
"This is a method that countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, the US, China and leading oil giants like Royal Dutch Shell and BP have adopted and we should not stay behind them in this field."
Because of overproduction chiefly by Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC producers, there is currently up to 2.5 million bpd of excess oil in the market which has caused crude prices to lose around 60% of their value since mid-2014.
OPEC introduced output ceiling of 30 million bpd in its December 2011 meeting as it scrapped allocating fixed production quotas to member countries. The group, however, has been producing nearly a million more barrels than its ceiling for the past 16 months.
