Oil Negotiations With NAM Members

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - I ran and member states of the NonAligned Movement (NAM) held comprehensive talks on oil trade in a meeting in Tehran on Friday, an Iranian lawmaker said. “Given the fact that all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are also members of the NAM and are in Tehran now, officials from the (Iranian) Oil Ministry held meetings with them on various oil issues, including trade and supply,” Rapporteur of the parliament’s Energy Commission, Emad Hosseini, told Fars News Agency on Saturday. He said the Oil Ministry officials have also held talks with a number of oil consuming countries on the sidelines of the NAM Summit in Tehran, adding the commission will soon review outcomes of the consultations. He stressed on the high demand for Iran’s oil, and said, “Iran has no problem for selling crude and can resolve possible problems in this regard through political consultations.”Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi announced on Wednesday that the country is in talks with NAM member states to find new customers for its crude amidst an array of western sanctions against the country’s oil trade. “We have had some negotiations with certain countries, including those states which buy our oil including India and certain African and Central Asian states,” Qassemi told reporters on the sidelines of the NAM’s ministerial meeting. “The results of Iran’s negotiations with the NAM members will be observed after the (NAM) summit,” he added. Iran’s total in-place oil reserves have been estimated at more than 560 billion barrels with about 140 billion barrels of extractable oil. Moreover, heavy and extra heavy varieties of crude oil account for roughly 70-100 billion barrels of the total reserves.Iran holds the world’s third largest proven oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves.It shares oil and gas fields with most of its neighbors, including Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. The country is OPEC’s second largest oil producer and the fourth crude oil exporter.In recent years, Iran has gradually been moving towards becoming a major exporter of refined oil and petrochemical products with significant success.Earlier, Qassemi said the country’s oil has been sold four months in advance and  Iran will face no problems even if European sanctions are imposed. “I think it is unlikely that global oil markets would ignore Iran’s oil because this would create problems for them,” he told IRNA/129