In January 2015, Maduro visited Iran, as a stop on his tour of other OPEC countries. Both Maduro and Rouhani agreed that falling oil prices resulted from increased fracking in the United States, as well as their “common enemies” using oil prices as a “political ploy.” Rouhani affirmed that Iran and Venezuela would join forces to “thwart world powers’ strategies ... and to stabilize prices at a reasonable level in 2015.” At the time, Venezuelan oil accounted for “over 95 percent of the country's export earnings,” with the price of a barrel dropping by half since 2014.