Surging prices should give Iran some $10 billion in extra oil revenue by early next year, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh said on Wednesday.
He said Iran had already earned some four billion dollars in extra revenue between April and July thanks to a robust market which has more than tripled the price since record lows late last year.
"It is possible that our revenues will show a surplus of 10 billion dollars before the end of the (Iranian) year (in March 2001)," Zanganeh said, cited by the official IRNA news agency.
He made the remarks shortly after returning from Vienna where the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to an 800,000 barrel per day (bpd) output hike to cool the overheating market.
Zanganeh said the cartel would "re-examine the oil-market situation and possibly decide on a new production hike" at its next meeting in November, adding prices could drop in early 2001.
President Mohammad Khatami's government had forseen some 14 billion dollars in oil revenues in the current year's budget, which underestimated prices to avoid a repeat of the previous two years when a plunge in the market left the Islamic republic with a serious budget shortfall.
Iran is OPEC's second largest producer behind Saudi Arabia and has an output of 3.7 million bpd, of which nearly two thirds is exported. Iran is to hike output more than 100,000 bpd under the latest OPEC agreement.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse.
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
