Adamant Iran poses challenge for OPEC optimists on global policy coordination

Charged up OPEC officials led by Venezuela, after they were successful in freezing output at January level by two of world's largest producers', Saudi Arabia and Russia, now faces the real challenge today, when they meet Iranian oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh. Venezuela's oil minister had a meeting with Iraq counterpart and they have headed to Tehran to Meet Mr. Bijan.

Iran's official OPEC envoy, Mehdi Asli, however stood firm when speaking to local media and reported by Reuters Internationally. According to him, asking Iran to freeze production level is illogical because, when Iran was under UN, US and EU sanctions, some countries increased their production as Iran's was on the slide and caused the price crash. He also said that Iran should not be expected to pay the price for others' actions.

Iran's output has fallen since the sanctions on 2011 and has averaged between 2.8-3.6 million barrels/day and its exports have fallen by more than half to just 1.1 million barrels/day.

According to Mr. Asli, Iran would increase output to at least Iran would keep ramping up production and exports.

If Venezuela led OPEC delegates' fails to recognize and accept Iran's legitimate, we at FxWirePro, believe OPEC as well as global cooperation would be another failed attempt.

Brent is currently trading at $33.2/barrel.