Iran ready to discuss oil with Saudis

“We support any form of dialogue and cooperation with OPEC member states including Saudi Arabia,” Zangeneh told reporters.

He said some Persian Gulf countries have announced that they are looking for trying to make economic benefits for themselves by helping to push down oil prices.  “But what they want to achieve is not at all for economic gains,” said Zangeneh.

“If there were a strong political will, the price of oil would have been balanced within one single week,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

The Iranian oil minister had in early January emphasized that the current oil prices harm all producers and certain countries’ insistence on overproduction is politically motivated.

“None of the oil producers is happy with the existing prices which will harm suppliers in the long term,” he has emphasized.

According to the Iranian minister, “there is a political will behind OPEC indecision over production ceiling in the organization.”

OPEC has been producing nearly a million more barrels of oil each day than its 30 million bpd ceiling for the past 16 months.

The organization approved a Saudi plan to scrap allocating fixed production quotas to member countries in its December 2011 meeting and introduced output ceiling of 30 million barrels per day (bpd) which does not specify quotas.

Zangeneh has described the decision a “historic mistake”, saying “making up for this big mistake and reviving the quota system in OPEC is a very hard task.”

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.