Tehran, Iran, June 1
By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:
Iran will not promise commitment to any plan on freezing its crude output volume, says Mehdi Asali, Iranian oil ministry's director for OPEC affairs and energy circles relations.
"However, Iran will support any action by OPEC to reestablish stability in the oil market with respect to fair and sensible oil prices," he said, IRNA news agency reported June 1.
"Iran's stance is clear and the country expects OPEC members in their upcoming meeting to regard the country's situation for it has just been freed of sanctions after years and is seeking to redeem its output and markets to the pre-sanctions times," Asali said.
"Right now the OPEC members are concerned with redeeming the market's stability and prices. The issue of rationing outputs would be better relegated to a time after," he added.
Iran has been called on by many countries, the rival Saudi Arabia in particular, to cooperate with the proposal to hold outputs at the January levels.
Tehran has rejected the idea as an imposition of a new set of sanctions on Iran after the country was freed of the economic sanctions in January.
Iran's Oil Ministry has said it suffered a setback from 2.3 million barrels per day (mbpd) of oil export to 1 mbpd under the sanctions, maintaining that it will not consider any freeze until it has made up for the "unjust" setback.