“Iran’s first request from OPEC members will be returning to agreed commitments regarding production limits,” Iranian Oil Ministry Spokesman Alireza Nikzad-Rahbar said on Tuesday.
He stressed that the last OPEC meeting, on June 14, decided that the organization’s overall output would be 30 million barrels per day (bpd) but production “has now exceeded 31 million bpd.”
The 162nd regular ministerial meeting of the OPEC will be held at the OPEC headquarters in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on Wednesday.
Member states will also vote to appoint a successor to OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah El-Badri.
Commenting on the vote, Nikzad-Rahbar said the Iranian delegation will do its outmost through diplomatic measures to take the position of General Secretary for the country, adding that Iran will not support any of the two candidates from Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Candidates from Iran and Ecuador will bring the number of countries competing for the post to four. The two current candidates are Thamir Ghadhban, the top energy adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and Saudi Arabia’s longtime OPEC governor, Majid al-Moneef.
The secretary general, who is the main representative on the world stage of the OPEC, helps formulate the organization’s output policy. He is also in charge of the Vienna secretariat of the organization.
OPEC, which provides about 35 percent of the world’s oil, is a permanent intergovernmental organization of 12 oil-exporting countries, including Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.
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