Iran Oil Minister to Skip Doha Output Freeze Meeting

Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zanganeh will not attend this week’s meeting among leading global oil producers to cut production, Iranian media reported Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members and non-OPEC oil producers are expected to discuss freezing oil output to curb oversupplies on Sunday, April 17, in the Qatari capital of Doha.

"#Iran #oil minister will not attend #Doha oil #freezing_meeting but Iran's representative will make it," the Seda weekly energy magazine’s senior analyst tweeted without naming the replacement.

The analyst said that Zanganeh, in a letter to Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed Saleh Sada, reportedly pledged that Tehran would continue ramping up productions until reaching pre-sanctions levels. Energy-related sanctions began to be gradually lifted after UN nuclear watchdogs verified Iran’s compliance with last summer’s landmark agreement curbing the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

In February, the energy ministers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela, and Russia discussed the current oil market situation in Doha and agreed to freeze oil production at January levels if other countries followed suit, in a bid to keep the oil prices from falling further.

Oil prices saw major declines from $115 per barrel in mid-2014 to $41.54 per barrel for WTI Crude and $44.24 per barrel for Brent as of early Wednesday.