Reacting to the failure of Doha Summit on April 17, Iran’s Minister of Oil Bijan Zanganeh said “a number of oil-producing countries were opposed to sanctions removal and made efforts to decrease oil prices.”
Zanganeh noted that these countries have tried to exert pressure on Iran by keeping oil prices at a low level asserting “as a result, the oil market has become saturated and the market imbalance has almost reached two million oil barrels per day.”
He emphasized that the aforementioned countries have boosted oil supply while the market has not issued a demand for increased production; “in other terms, they are mainly seeking to divert public opinion on the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“These states have been the root and cause of instability in the world market,” highlighted the official stressing “they accuse Iran of being the source of the problem while Iran has had no role in the regard.”
Oil minister emphasized that oil sanctions were ended after months and years of negotiations; “still, some major oil producers are after freezing Iran’s oil productions on the basis of the output in January 2016.”
“They look forward to imposing new sanctions against Iranian oil industry,” reiterated the official saying “the oil freeze project aims to reduce the volume of Iran’s oil exports to that of the sanction years.”
He deemed the measures as a sort of illusion recalling “the Islamic Republic of Iran would support the holding of oil coordination meeting among major OPEC and non-OPEC producers and calls for the return of stability to the oil market.”
“We will make efforts to bring stability to the oil market,” commented Zanganeh adding “we would spare no effort in this regard though Iran is not responsible for the current instability in the oil market.”
At the end of his remarks, Zanganeh pointed to the need to continue the efforts and negotiations on offering stability to the market, “no one would accept the incoherent arguments made by countries who are indeed in charge of the oil market instability.”
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