OPEC+ Leaves Oil Output Targets Unchanged for December (Table)

Seven members of the OPEC+ group of oil producers agreed to keep output quotas unchanged in December, after unwinding the last of their voluntary cuts in September.

While oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are rising and an alternative Saudi export route via the Red Sea picked up in October, OPEC+’s Persian Gulf members remain constrained in their ability to make use of higher output targets.

Following a meeting on Sunday, targets for the seven-country subgroup are shown in the table below in thousands of barrels a day, alongside their actual output in September, the most recent month for which OPEC has reported estimates by its secondary sources.

The seven nations will continue to convene each month to review market conditions and will hold their next meeting on Nov. 29, the same day that the full OPEC+ group is due to get together.

Headline Output Targets:

Algeria9719779839899951,0011,0071,003Iraq4,2734,2994,3264,3524,3784,4054,4313,920Kuwait2,5802,5962,6122,6282,6442,6602,6761,766Saudi Arabia10,10310,16610,22810,29110,35310,41610,4788,001Kazakhstan1,5691,5791,5891,5991,6081,6181,6281,851Oman811816821826831836841939Russia9,5749,6379,6999,7629,8249,8879,9498,643

The table above doesn’t reflect additional cuts to compensate for earlier overproduction that have been made by Kazakhstan and Oman. Those “compensation cuts,” most recently revised on April 7, reduced the effective output quotas for Kazakhstan by more than half to just 710,000 barrels a day for May and 720,000 for June. Smaller compensation cuts by Oman lowered its targets to 812,000 barrels a day for May and 806,000 for June.

The period for compensating for past overproduction has been extended to the end of the year, but as yet there are no published compensation cuts beyond June.