Iran sees $100 oil price 'quite normal', crisis ahead

December 8, 2010 - 0:0

TEHRAN - Iran's OPEC governor believes the supply of oil with at a price of $100 price is quite normal in short term, warning that the world would face a looming oil supply crisis because of production declines of up to 10% from producing fields.

""The world faces great uncertainties in security of energy supply and that the price of crude is still undervalued and set to hit $100 in the short term,"" Mohammad-Ali Khatibi told the Mehr news agency.
""The world is concerned about the security of energy supply due to the anticipation of a drop in global oil production and a drop in the supply from non-OPEC countries,"" he added.
The era of cheap oil was over, he said, adding that current oil prices were unrealistic when compared with historic prices and a higher oil price was needed to guarantee investment in new capacity, ""which is one of the solutions for supply security.""
Khatibi said the increase in the oil price still did not reflect the fall in value of the dollar over recent months.
""At the moment, global oil prices have not increased in a real way compared to previous years. They do not consider the drop of the dollar in the calculations.""
He made the remarks ahead of a meeting of OPEC oil ministers on December 11 in Ecuador. Several member states have said there is unlikely to be a change in production quotas at the meeting.
""In recent years some of non-OPEC countries have continuously oversupplied the market, but this will not be possible in the coming years because of a drop in production,"" Khatibi said.
Iran is OPEC's second largest exporter after Saudi.
According to the latest Platts survey of OPEC's output for November, Iran is producing 3.69 million b/d of crude oil