Iran will not discuss its OPEC quota as long as it is under sanctions, Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said, speaking after the session of the OPEC-Non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) in Vienna
According to him, Iran should be excluded from any decision on output quotas in the future until the U.S. sanctions are lifted.
The minister did not specify the Iran's current level of production as he said it might serve as a pretext for the U.S. to extert pressure on Tehran. "If they [the U.S.] want to exert pressure on Iran through OPEC, this is unprofessional, and I want to add that OPEC is not part of the U.S. Department of Energy, so it does not need instructions from the U.S. on what to do," TASS cited Zanganeh as saying.
The JMMC meeting was held in Vienna yesterday. The participants agreed to recommend OPEC members to cut output in the first half of 2019. Production will be cut by around 1 mln barrels per day. Ministers of OPEC countries will consider the recommendation on Thursday, non-OPEC states - on Friday.
