TEHRAN – Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh expressed satisfaction with the outcomes of the 177th Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the OPEC+ meetings which were held during December 5-6, Mehr News Agency reported.

Speaking to the press after the OPEC+ meeting on Friday, Zanganeh said: “we have reached good outcomes however most of the issues were approached in the short-run and there would be an extraordinary OPEC meeting in three or four months in order to follow up on the decisions.”

Asked why the OPEC meeting took over seven hours, Zanganeh blamed mathematics for the meeting taking too long.

The key outcomes

Following the gathering of OPEC+ nations on Friday, the 14-member organization released a statement in which five key decisions of the 177th OPEC meeting were announced.

As reported by Shana, OPEC+ production cuts will be increased by 503,000 barrels per day (bpd) as of January 1, 2020, from 1.2 million bpd to 1.703 million bpd; secondary sources designated as OPEC and non-OPEC production reference sources; gas condensate was removed from crude oil production calculation of non-OPEC producers; Algeria's energy minister was selected as OPEC Conference President alphabetically, and eventually, Iran became the vice-chairman of the OPEC board of governors.

Iran, Venezuela, and Libya remained exempted from any output cuts. 

Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, the Iranian representative to the OPEC Board of Governors, was elected Vice-Chairman of the OPEC Board of Governors in 2020. The president of the board will be representative of Gabon.

OPEC Board of Governors is the executive pillar of OPEC, whose main functions are to manage the affairs of the Organization and to execute conference decisions, to review and decide on reports submitted by the Secretary-General, to provide reports and recommendations to the Conference on Organization Affairs, to arrange the organization's budget for each calendar year and submit it to the conference for approval, etc.

EF/MA