OPEC is still debating a three-, six- or nine-month extension of its oil output agreement but will not consider deeper cuts, Iranian oil minister Bijan Zanganeh said Wednesday.
"All agree...to maintain OPEC's production ceiling, [but] the term is not clear," Zanganeh said on the sidelines of an Iranian cabinet meeting in Tehran, according to the country's ISNA news agency. "Maybe three months, six or nine months."
He added that he was under the impression that "Saudi Arabia is looking to raise [oil] prices."
Zanganeh is due to arrive in Vienna later Wednesday for OPEC's ministerial meeting on Thursday, when the organization will also meet with 11 key non-OPEC oil producers that agreed to last December's production cut deal.
Under the deal, OPEC committed to a 1.2 million b/d cut, while the 11 non-OPEC countries led by Russia agreed to cut 558,000 b/d, from January through June.
Saudi Arabia and Russia last week jointly declared their support for a nine-month extension through March 2018, and several ministers within the producer coalition appear to be coalescing around that.
A five-country monitoring committee overseeing the deal is set to formally recommend the nine-month extension at a meeting today, according to Kuwaiti official news agency Kuna, but OPEC sources have told S&P Global Platts that the deal is not yet nailed down.
"All options are open," Kuwaiti oil minister Essam al-Marzouq told reporters after a meeting of OPEC's Gulf Cooperation Council countries at the Kempinski Hotel in Vienna. "Everything is on the table. We will see the Q3 effect on the cuts and we will have other options."
UAE energy minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said: "OPEC is based on consensus so we need to hear all of the options and make the right choice."
Ecuadorian oil minister Carlos Perez said Tuesday that two proposals are on the table -- a six-month extension and a nine-month one, both at current quotas.
Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih, who arrived Tuesday in Vienna but declined to comment to reporters, has said multiple times in the last week that the producer group was prepared to do "whatever it takes" to draw down inventories to the five-year average, as OPEC has said is the goal.
