Nigeria wants Iran to delay its plans to pump more crude oil – Kachikwu

Nigeria will ask OPEC to prevail upon fellow member Iran to delay its plans for a post-sanctions increase in oil exports in order to ease the oil price slump that is negatively affecting the revenues of producing countries, junior oil minister Emmanuel Kachikwu said Wednesday.

“There is a lot of sensitivity [to] the $42/barrel oil price currently, that it has the potential to go down if Iran throws the estimated 1.5 million b/d of crude into the market by next year,” Kachikwu told reporters in Lagos ahead of his departure for OPEC’s December 4 meeting in Vienna, at which the oil producer group will set output policy for the year ahead.

“I will be meeting one-on-one with other OPEC ministers to try and see how we can at least get to delay Iran flooding the market with 1.5 million b/d. I will be talking with Iran’s oil minister on that so that we can stabilize the price,” Kachikwu said.