Amid growing rift with Saudi over increasing cartel's oil output, Iran walks out of OPEC peers meet

Vienna, June 22: Amid growing rift with its regional-rival Saudi Arabia, Iran on Thursday walked out of an Organisation Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) peers meeting. Notably, the rift between Iran and its regional rival Saudi Arabia peaked over increasing the cartel's oil output.

 

Oil Minister of Iran Bijan Namdar Zanganeh walked out of an OPEC peers meeting, which was aimed at laying the groundwork for Friday’s crucial meeting of 14-nations to discuss easing supply-cut deal with 10 partner countries. The Iranian Minister said that he did not think Tehran can go further ahead and walked out of the meeting.

The rift between Iran and Saudi Arabia is on the output of oil. The output curbs were placed in January 2017 but now Saudi Arabia is pushing to raise production again in order to meet growing demand in the second half of 2018. However, this proposal was resisted by Iran, Iraq and Venezuela fearing losing market share.

Saudi Arabia, who lauded US exit from the nuclear pact is now in under tremendous pressure from Trump to boost output in order to lower oil prices ahead of November's midterm elections. Interestingly, the 24 nations in the pact, known as OPEC+, initially agreed to trim production by 1.8 million barrels a day but they have actually been keeping more than two million bpd off the market.