Russia, the OPEC nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela announced on Tuesday that they had agreed to freeze oil output so it would consistently stay at January levels.

The oil ministers made this announcement after conglomerating in the Qatari capital Doha.

Additionally Iraq has said its ready to comply "with any decision that contributes to propping up oil prices," according to a source in that country's oil ministry.

"The reason we agreed to a potential freeze of production is simple: it is the beginning of a process which we will assess in the next few months and decide if we need other steps to stabilize and improve the market," explained Saudi Arabia's oil minister Ali al-Naimi according to Reuters.

"Freezing now at the January level is adequate for the market. We don't want significant gyrations in prices, we want to meet demand. We want a stable oil price," he added.

The energy minister of Qatar, Mohammad bin Saleh al-Sada also told a news conference that this move would help stabilize the world price of oil.

This comes after the price of oil dropped 70 percent over the course of the past 20 months.

This was a result of the major producers increasing their production which brought down the price and has led to some oil producers receiving less revenue.

Iraq's production of oil last January was record heights with an average of 4.7 million barrels of oil, including oil coming from fields in the Kurdistan Region, exported a day.

Iraq's cutting of revenue sharing with the Kurdistan Region in February 2014 coupled with the ongoing war against ISIS and the drop in the world price of oil has had adverse affects on the Kurdistan Region. Revenue from the export of oil had financed a large public sector which is now in need of reform and downsizing.

Erbil has also been independently exporting oil from its territory to try and meet some of its budgetary needs. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that Baghdad and Erbil could resume sharing oil revenues provided Erbil halted its independent oil sales.

Iran's oil has also begun to reenter the market after economic sanctions leveled against that country were removed following the nuclear deal brokered between Tehran and the P5+1 powers. The return of Iranian oil onto world markets at this point in time has led to fears of a further oversupply of oil.

However there is reason to believe that Iran can be convinced to consider maintaining a certain output over 'flooding the market' (and potentially bringing down the price even further) once its output reaches pre-sanctions levels.

As CMC Markets analyst Jasper Lawler said in a note quoted by Reuters: "The output freeze is disappointing because it's not an outright cut, and with Iran not a part of the meeting it's still a bit far-fetched to think this is a precursor to a future cut. Iran's absence from the meeting means overall OPEC output should still rise."

Rudaw