What’s next for OPEC+ oil quotas as Saudi Arabia ramps up output?
Each member's capacity figure will be used to set its production limit starting 2027, to end years of quota disputes.
ABU DHABI — Saudi Arabia's crude output jumped in October to its highest level since the Iran war began, the increase coming days before OPEC+ is due to receive a US audit to settle recurring disputes over how much each member of the world's biggest group of oil producers can pump.
The kingdom produced 10.56 million barrels a day last month, up 26% from September, according to figures it provided for OPEC's monthly report released on Nov. 11. The audit had been due by the end of September but slipped to mid-November after the war delayed plans in the region to expand capacity, and some members failed to submit their data, according to a Reuters report in October. OPEC+ ministers are scheduled to meet on Nov. 29. The timeline would still allow them to consider the audit findings at that meeting, Reuters reported.
OPEC+, which groups the 11 members of OPEC with 10 allies led by Russia, has set production quotas by bargaining for years, and ministers decided last November that an independent audit of each country’s capacity would become the reference point for its output limit starting in 2027. Saudi Arabia, the group’s de facto leader and the member with the most spare capacity, wants each country’s quota to rest on the audit’s figures.
“It wants to get away from the difficult quota negotiations that OPEC and OPEC+ have faced for many years and which ultimately drove UAE and Angola out of OPEC,” Tim Callen, who ran the International Monetary Fund’s division covering Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf oil exporters from 2012 to 2021 and is now a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told Al-Monitor. “The audit will likely show that there is little spare production capacity outside of Saudi Arabia.”
