Iran to urge OPEC to trim overproduction
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-07 00:33

Iran will call on producers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to bring their output down to the current ceiling when the group meets next week, Iran's OPEC governor said in a report published Monday.

However, Hossein Kazempour Ardebili said he expected members with spare production capacity, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, would probably call for a 1 million barrels a day ceiling hike.

``So OPEC will concede to a 500,000 barrels a day increase,'' he told the Farsi-language Sharq newspaper.

OPEC's current output ceiling is 27.5 million barrels a day, but the producer group says it is pumping more than 30 million barrels a day in a bid to build stocks ahead of expected demand increases later this year.

OPEC will meet in Vienna on June 15.

Kazempour said the demand to increase the ceiling was partly due to ``political considerations.''

Limited refinery capacity, surging US demand for gasoline and concerns over security of supply had pushed prices up recently, he said.

Light, sweet crude was trading Monday above US$55 a barrel.

Prices will moderate this winter, falling to around US$45-50 a barrel, Kazempour said.

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