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Iran stands behind its candidate for OPEC chief
Jordan Times, Sunday, November 30, 2003
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran said Saturday it was standing firmly behind its own candidate for secretary general of the oil cartel OPEC and warned that it would not vote for any other. "If they (the other members) don't vote for Iran's candidate ... there is no reason Iran should vote for others," Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said.
Venezuela's Alvaro Silva Calderon is seeking a new mandate as chief of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but both Iran and Kuwait have also put up candidates for the strategically important post. The Iranian minister said Tehran's position had not changed.
"There are three nominations, Iran, Venezuela and Kuwait. The ministers have to decide. And if they can't decide, based on OPEC's charter, the election should be based on alphabetic order," he said, reiterating a suggestion OPEC resort to a rotating leadership.
At a meeting in Vienna in September, OPEC ministers were unable to reach an agreement on who should lead the cartel, an appointment that has to be made by consensus. The 11-member cartel is to meet next Saturday to examine the market and the impact of a November 1 decision to cut 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) from its previous quota of 25.4 million barrels.
Zanganeh refused to be drawn out on whether OPEC would again lower production, saying only he and his counterparts would "have to meet and decide collectively."
He said that any changes to Iran's current production of 4.2 million bpd would depend on the OPEC decision.
The minister added that the Islamic Republic was planning to increase its oil production to 5.4 million bpd by the year 2010 and to more than 7 million bpd in the next 20 years in order to preserve its OPEC quota. He blamed currently high price of oil — recently up to more than $30 a barrel — on "political nervousness and the current situation in Iraq, that is still suffering from a lack of certainty."
Most analysts expect OPEC to extend the current ceiling of 24.5 million bpd at the upcoming meeting.
Turning his attention towards gas, Zanganeh said his goal was to "saturate our domestic market."
"Our next step is to export it through pipes to Turkey and via there to Europe and also export it to Pakistan and India," he said, "and also export it in the form of a liquefied natural gas."
He said the Iranian petrochemical industry, with a daily consumption of 100 million cubic metres, would emerge as the domestic consumer of gas in the next decade.
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