Saudi Arabia, Iran agree OPEC must keep to pledged
cuts
MUSCAT, March 3 (AFP) - Saudi Arabia and Iran agree that OPEC must keep
to its pledged output cuts and combine its efforts with non-OPEC producers
to curb the slump in oil prices, the Saudi foreign minister said Wednesday.
Prince Saud al-Faisal said Riyadh and Tehran saw eye to eye on the "deterioration
of the situation on the oil market and the need for OPEC to keep its commitments."
In March and June 1998, the cartel decided to slash production by 2.6
million barrels per day (bpd). The issue of possible new cuts has been
left for OPEC's next meeting on March 23.
Following talks with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi in Riyadh
on Tuesday, Prince Saud told reporters on arrival in Muscat that they also
agreed on "joint action within OPEC and in collaboration" with
independent producers.
The focus of their talks was on ways to prevent a further fall in prices,
according to a foreign ministry spokesman in Tehran.
In an interview published on Monday, Saudi Oil Minister Ali ibn Ibrahim
al-Nuaimi renewed charges that Tehran was not keeping to its agreed OPEC
output cut.
"You have 10 sovereign nations that came to an agreement and I
think nine countries are asking the 10th to live up to the June 1998 accord,"
he said.
Iran's fellow producers in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries
regularly accuse Tehran, the world's fourth largest producer, of busting
its quota.
The dispute stems from production cuts agreed by OPEC in March 1998.
The cuts were based on the cartel's February production levels, in Iran's
case 3.6 million bpd.
But Iran has argued that it had technical problems during February and
its average production was about 3.9 million bpd and this should be the
baseline from which to make its pledged cut of 305,000 bpd.
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