TEHRAN — The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries corrected its data on the ranking of major oil exporters within the organization and placed Iran as the second largest exporter next to Saudi Arabia, Iran’s OPEC governor said here on Wednesday.

By exporting 2.583 million barrels of oil per day, Iran stood above Nigeria as the second largest oil exporter in OPEC in 2010, Mohammad-Ali Khatibi told Shana news agency.

In its latest annual statistical bulletin, OPEC had put Nigeria ahead of Iran in regard to export of oil in 2010. The issue was strongly reacted by Iranian officials who called that report ‘ambiguous’.

In July, Khatibi said Iranian experts had found ambiguities in some of the figures in the OPEC report and thus the experts "did not confirm Nigeria's export increase".

"OPEC rationing is based on production, not export, and Iran still holds the second-largest OPEC producer status and no change has happened in this regard," said Khatibi.

"In the report Iran's oil income exceeds that of Nigeria in 2010. Then how would it be possible for Nigeria's oil income to be less than that of Iran despite having boosted its exports?"

Previously, the report of Reuters about the world's top oil exporters in 2010, based on the BP and the EIA data, approved Iran’s claim, clarifying that Iran is still the second largest oil exporter in OPEC.