Media: OPEC + will discuss the reduction of oil production by a million barrels per day

MOSCOW, 2 Oct — PRIME. OPEC+ will consider cutting oil production by more than one million barrels per day at a meeting in Vienna on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, citing delegates.

Earlier, the organization reported that OPEC + decided to hold a meeting of the ministerial monitoring committee and all heads of the alliance on October 5 offline in Vienna. These meetings will be held in this format for the first time since March 2020, when ministers began meeting via videoconference due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“It seems to me that they would not want to meet in person for a small step,” the agency quoted Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, as saying.

Delegates said no final decision on the size of the cut would be made before the ministerial meeting.

As Reuters reported this week, citing alliance sources, OPEC+ members have begun discussing additional production cuts for November, and it is “probable.” The agency also wrote that the Russian delegation may propose to the alliance to reduce oil production by about 1 million barrels per day at the next meeting in October.

The agency then wrote that OPEC+ members are focused on cutting from 500,000 to 1 million barrels per day.

OPEC+ cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels per day in May 2020 due to a drop in oil demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Then the terms of the agreement were repeatedly adjusted, and in August the alliance moved to the final stage of exiting its cuts. According to the conditions for September, OPEC + increased production by 100,000 barrels per day, but in October it reduces it by the same volume and returns to August parameters.