Competition over OPEC secretary general post; Iran backs Iraq

Iran announced on June 2 that it will introduce a nominee for the post of secretary general of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but a day later Iraqi deputy Prime Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said that Iran will support Samir Ghazban, the Iraqi nominee for the position.

Mr. Shahristani told Bloomberg that Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi, in his recent talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad, has voiced his support for the Iraqi nominee to take over the post of OPEC secretary general. Meanwhile, the IRNA News Agency quoted Qasemi on Sunday as saying that Iran will introduce its nominee for this position at the June 14th meeting.

However, Iran has not officially declared its withdrawal from taking over the post of the OPEC secretary general. The Iranian oil minister reiterated on June 4th that the country will soon introduce a nominee for the position.

Iraq is inexperienced in executive affairs in the OPEC and has only worked as formally part of the organisation due to sanctions and war.

The OPEC's current Libyan secretary general, Abdallah el-Badri, has been in the position for two terms since 2007. Although Iran is the OPEC's second major producer, the only Iranian secretary general has been Mr Foad Rohani, who held the post between 1961 and 1964. Iran has attempted several times to take OPEC general secretary post during last 30 years by nominating Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian and Hossein Kazemi Ardabili, but could not succeed.

Iraq which currently holds the periodic chairmanship of OPEC, introduced Samir Ghazban, 67, as the nominee for the post of OPEC secretary general. Mr Ghazban served as oil minister of Iraq during 2004-2005.

With Iran's withdrawal from competing over this post, Iraq now sees just two rivals, namely Saudi Arabia's Majid al-Moneef and Ecuador's Wilson Pastor.

El-Badri, the OPEC's current Libyan secretary general, will leave the post at the end of 2012. The oil ministers of the 12-member organisation will meet in Vienna on June 14th to hold talks on the issue of the next secretary general.

Although the organisation takes decisions based on a majority of votes, the post is of high importance, as the secretary general has the duty to coordinate members, adopt executive policies and prepare oil output reports as well as analyse the oil market.

Iran, which has reportedly seen a sharp decline in its oil output as a result of economic sanctions and routinely rejects OPEC reports about its oil output. For example, the organisation released a report last month on the production of oil by the member states. According to the report, Iran's oil output fell by 134,000 barrels per day in April to reach 3.196 million bpd. The figure is different by 500,000 bpd compared to what Iran has announced in a report to OPEC. Based on Iran's Oil Ministry statistics, the country's oil output hit 3.758 million bpd in April, but the figure was not confirmed both by OPEC and the International Energy Agency.

The other issue, which was referred to on Monday by Qasemi, was the need for being obliged to keep to quotas issued by the OPEC member states. He said that the issue of excess production will also be discussed at the upcoming meeting.

The 12-member organisation accounts for one third of the global oil output. It agreed at its 160th meeting on December 13th, 2011 in Vienna to keep the ceiling output at 30 million bpd. However statistics show that the organisation's output exceeded 31.621 million bpd in April.

Saudi Arabia and Iraq produce 9.897 million bpd and 3.025 million bpd of oil, respectively. The figures are 1.621 million bpd and 624,000 bpd more than the figures for 2010. This is while Iran's oil output has decreased by 510,000 bpd since 2010, according to OPEC reports.

Iraq announced that it will boost oil output by 400,000 bpd in the current year. Iran has always been opposed to any increase in the ceiling output, because increasing the output will decrease prices in the international market. The falling oil price has decreased Iran's oil revenues, a country highly dependent on oil exports.


Dalga Khatinoglu /Trend/