Tehran (Platts)--25Feb2008

There is no justification for an OPEC output increase at the March 5
meeting in Vienna and the producers' club is more likely to follow past
practice and cut production--despite US pressure on OPEC to hike production at
their last meeting in February, a senior Iranian official said Monday.
"A decision to increase production at the next OPEC meeting has no
justification because the demand for crude oil in spring will drop by 1.5
million b/d to 2 million b/d, and last year OPEC also decreased its production
ahead of spring," said Mohammadali Khatibi, deputy head of marketing at the
National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), in a report by the ministry's news agency
Shana.
"Evidence shows that it is possible that in the next meeting OPEC [will]
cut its output. This is while consuming countries such as the United States
ask for an increase in production the way they pressured the organization to
raise output at the previous meeting," Khatibi said.
This was believed to be a reference to a call by US President George W
Bush and his energy secretary Samuel Bodman for additional oil supply when the
two men visited Gulf Arab oil producers Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar just
days before OPEC met in Vienna on February 1.
On Saturday, Iranian oil minister Gholamhossen Nozari said Iran, OPEC's
second-biggest producer after Saudi Arabia, would back a production cut and
predicted that supply would be trimmed in advance of weaker demand after the
end of the northern hemisphere winter.