(Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
OPEC+ gathered online May 28 to ratify their current groupwide production quotas, ahead of a decision by eight key members at the weekend whether to bolster output again in July.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners will leave unchanged their longer-term targets for 2025 and 2026, which underpin its current supply restraints, delegates said after their video conference got underway.
The more market-sensitive discussion on whether to continue their 411,000 barrel-a-day hikes, which have sent prices crashing over the past two months, will be finalized in a video conference on May 31, delegates said, asking not to be identified as the talks are private.
The sequencing of the meetings underscores how oil quotas for the full 22-nation OPEC+ alliance have receded in importance over the past two years, as actual supply adjustments are carried out by sub-group of eight countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia.
It was these nations that shattered market expectations on April 3, when they announced their first supersized hike — triple the volume originally scheduled. The shock move, unveiled just hours after President Donald Trump launched a global trade war, helped send crude futures to a four-year low below $60 a barrel in the ensuing days, marking a rupture with years of efforts by the coalition to try to shore up prices.
Brent contracts have since stabilized near $65 as Trump has reversed some of his trade tariffs.
OPEC+ delegates have offered a range of explanations for the policy reversal: from satisfying summer fuel demand to punishing over-producing members, and from placating Trump to recouping lost market share.
In theory, the May 28 gathering could have given the Saudis the opportunity to further these last two objectives.
While the eight countries are just over halfway through restoring roughly 2.2 million barrels of output halted since 2023, if they maintain the current accelerated pace of increases, they will have completed that process by October.
If OPEC+ were fully committed to regaining market share it could have proposed changing those underlying output quotas during the discussion on May 28. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman has built a reputation for springing last-minute surprises, but delegates said such moves aren’t on the agenda.
The first meeting May 28 was of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, comprising a selection of OPEC+ members that review oil market conditions. It concluded without making any recommendations, delegates said.
That was followed by a gathering of the full 22-country OPEC+ group. Finally the 12 core OPEC members will hold one of the two obligatory annual check-ins, which tend to be largely administrative affairs.
Ministers’ discussions will include a mechanism for their previously agreed plan to assess baseline production levels for 2027, according to delegates.
