Official Stresses Necessity to Name Iran's Representative for OPEC Meeting

"At the latest, Iran has the next two days to announce a representative that will be attending the upcoming OPEC meeting and will assume the presidency of the organization," Khatibi said. 

The upcoming Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) ministerial meeting will be held on June 8 in the Austrian capital, Vienna. 

Iran officially took over the presidency of OPEC for the first time in 36 years on January 2011 and the country's former Oil Minister Massoud Mir-Kazzemi was elected as president of the organization. 

In May President Ahmadinejad relieved the oil minister from his post and temporarily assumed the role of caretaker oil minister. 

Later, an Iranian Oil Ministry official ended weeks of media speculations about the presence of Ahmadinejad in the next ministerial meeting of the OPEC, saying that a cabinet minister, and not Ahmadinejad, will chair the OPEC gathering. 

"In a face-to-face meeting with President Ahmadinejad, he announced that he would not attend the next OPEC meeting," Iranian Oil Ministry Director Shojaoddin Bazargani said late in May. 

On Thursday, the Iranian president assigned former head of Iran's Physical Education Organization Mohammad Ali Abadi as caretaker of the oil ministry. 

"Considering your commitment, knowledge, and useful executive experience, and in accordance with Article 135 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and based on this decree, you [Ali Abadi] are appointed as acting oil minister," read the presidential directive issued on Thursday. 

Iran, OPEC's second largest crude exporter, currently holds the presidency of the cartel, a position it is holding for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.