OPEC+ Adjusts Oil Production Policy

By Alex Lawler, Ahmad Ghaddar, and Yousef Saba

LONDON (Reuters) – OPEC+ at its Dec. 5 meeting made further changes to its oil production policy, delaying a planned increase in output into next year as it faces a weaker oil demand outlook.

The oil producer group pushed back the start of oil output rises by three months until April 2025 and extended the full unwinding of cuts by a year until the end of 2026 due to weak demand and booming production outside the group.

Understanding OPEC+ Cuts

OPEC+ members are currently cutting output by a total of 5.85 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 5.7% of global demand. The cuts consist of three tranches:

1. 2.00 million bpd by all OPEC+ members – extended on Dec. 5 by one year until the end of 2026 from the end of 2025.
2. 1.65 million bpd of voluntary cuts by eight members (Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) – extended on Dec. 5 by one year until the end of 2026 from the end of 2025. Gabon was part of the deal when first announced in 2023, totaling 1.66 million bpd.
3. 2.20 million bpd of voluntary cuts by eight members (the same) – extended on Dec. 5 by three months to the end of March 2025 from the end of December 2024.

Under the Dec. 5 agreement, the UAE was granted a higher production quota, allowing a gradual output increase of 300,000 bpd starting April 2025, three months later than previously planned, until the end of September 2026.

Future OPEC+ Output

OPEC+ issued a table showing how the phasing out of the 2.2 million bpd of voluntary cuts and the UAE increase will affect output from April 2025. Output for other OPEC+ members will remain steady through end-2026.