Iran on Saturday reiterated its call for Opec to pull supply back down to official quota levels and mapped out a way to fund a long-promised production hike, a newspaper reported. Iran's Opec Governor Hossein Kazempour Ardebili had told Reuters on Monday that the cartel should mop up oversupply because global markets were awash with some two million barrels per day (bpd) of crude beyond demand.
"Opec members should go back to quota levels," he told the Sharq daily in an interview, when asked what course the Islamic Republic advocated for the December 10 meeting in Cairo.
The 10 members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) bound by quotas pumped 27.89 million barrels per day in October, 890,000 barrels above new official limits beginning November 1, a Reuters survey found.
Kazempour also said Opec would probably not discuss changing its $22-$28 a barrel price target.
"It does not seem that under current conditions, where the oil market is affected by issues such as instability in Iraq, that changing the Opec price band will be discussed in Cairo," the delegate of Opec's second-biggest producer said.