OPEC Acting to Balance Oil Market, Iran OPEC Governor Says

“OPEC is trying to compensate part of the shortage of supply of crude and to create a balance in the market and in the future OPEC will continue to fulfill its duty,” Khatibi said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is scheduled to meet June 8 in Vienna as oil prices trade above $115 a barrel today in London.

Global oil demand will rise to 88.9 million barrels a day by the end of the year, Khatibi said, according to Fars. Demand for OPEC’s crude will rise to 29.8 million barrels a day in the same period, from 29.7 million in the first quarter, he said.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad sacked the country’s oil minister in a reshuffle on May 14, appointing himself one day later as the country’s caretaker oil minister.

Iran, the second-biggest oil producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, holds the rotating presidency of the organization this year. Ahmadinejad won’t attend the June 8 meeting himself, Shojaeddin Bazargani, the director general of the Ministerial Affairs Department at Oil Ministry, said May 23. A minister will represent Iran in the meeting, Bazargani then said, according to local media.

A senior Iranian member of parliament warned that Iran’s OPEC presidency may run into trouble if Ahmadinejad doesn’t appoint an official to chair the next ministerial meeting.

“A caretaker or oil minister must chair OPEC, and if we continue with the current trend, Iran will certainly lose OPEC’s presidency,” Emad Hosseini, the rapporteur of the parliament’s energy committee, told state-run Fars news yesterday, according to a report published today.

OPEC’s 12 members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Iraq is exempt from the group’s quota system.