Iran has rejected a plan by Russia and Saudi Arabia to increase oil production at a meeting of the OPEC oil cartel this week in response to consumer disgruntlement with rising prices.
"I don’t believe at this meeting we can reach agreement," Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said.
Moscow and Riyadh have proposed reversing most of a 1.8-million-barrels-a-day cut in production that OPEC and other major producers agreed to in 2016 amid recent calls by the United States, China, and other major oil-consuming countries for relief from rising pump prices.
But Iran has signaled its opposition along with Iraq, Algeria, and Venezuela, three other influential OPEC members. Zanganeh cited recent demands for a production increase from U.S. President Donald Trump as a reason to oppose it.
According to Zanganeh, Trump has "created difficulty for the oil market" by imposing sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, leading to lower production and higher prices.
"And now he expects OPEC to change something for better prices. That is not fair. OPEC is an independent organization, not an organization to receive instruction from President Trump.... OPEC is not part of the Department of Energy of the United States," RFE/RL cited the minister as saying.
OPEC will meet on June 22 to review the agreement and plans to meet the next day with Russia and other non-OPEC producers that joined the agreement in 2016.
