 |
Chavez in Iran for Oil Talks
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrived in Tehran Sunday for talks with Iranian officials on the oil market situation following the September 11 attacks on the United States, airport officials said. Chavez will be welcomed by President Mohammad Khatami at the Saad-Abad palace in northern Tehran before starting his talks.
Chavez arrived from Saudi Arabia where he and King Fahd agreed on the "importance" of oil price stability. The Venezuelan head of state is lobbying other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to keep up oil prices, possibly through a cut in output. Since the terror attacks on New York and Washington, Khatami and Chavez had held numerous telephone talks on the oil market situation.
OPEC's price per barrel has lingered around 20 dollars for more than three weeks, below the 22-dollar floor of its target band and in theory triggering an automatic 500,000 barrels-per-day cut. The slump in oil prices has been aggravated by looming recession after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which hit the air travel industry, a large oil consumer, particularly hard. Key OPEC ministers met Friday in Vienna to discuss crude prices without taking any official decision on the issue.
In This Section
|