Iran's OPEC Governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi said that Iran is very serious in adherence to OPEC cuts, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday.

Dismissing allegations that Iran has met little of its pledge to reduce supply, Khatibi said such estimates were "unfortunate."

"We are very serious in our adherence to OPEC cuts. Iran is complying fully with its share of OPEC's oil supply cuts," Fars quoted him as saying, adding that Iran is sure that other OPEC members are also very serious.

At the emergency meeting in Vienna on Oct. 24, OPEC ministers agreed to reduce output by 1.5 million barrels a day to 27.3 million bpd from Nov. 1 in an attempt to prevent prices falling further.

On Oct. 31, Iranian Minister of Oil Gholam Hossein Nozari said Iran will cut its crude oil production by 199,000 barrels per day from Nov. 1.

Khatibi suggested producers do more to shore up a deteriorating market and called for the "desired investments to be made in oil production at the time of surplus supplies in the market.

"We will face straits in future if the investments are cut or fallen," he said.

OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri told Iran's Energy and Oil Information Network on Monday that it is ready to cut production by good amount at upcoming ministerial meeting in Algeria.

According to El-Badri, OPEC is ready to cut production by a significant amount when the organization meets on Dec. 17 in Algeria's Oran though its Cairo meeting on Saturday decided to delay a decision on a new supply reduction.

OPEC, which supplies about 40 percent of the global oil output, has believed that oil demand would be affected significantly amid concerns of world economic recession in the first half of next year.

Crude oil price plunged to a four-year low on Friday after a report showed that the U.S. economy is heading for a deep recession.

Light, sweet crude for January delivery fell 2.86 U.S. dollars to settle at 40.81 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after touching 40.50 dollars, the lowest since December 2004.

(Xinhua News Agency December 7, 2008)