MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. The ministerial monitoring committee of OPEC+ will meet online on Saturday to analyze the current state of the oil market.
This time, only the ministerial monitoring meeting is planned. Full-format meetings of all OPEC+ ministers are held every six months, with the next such meeting likely to take place in late May. Just two days ago, on April 3, eight OPEC+ countries that have committed to voluntarily reducing oil production by 2.2 mln barrels per day starting in 2024 held an online meeting. As a result of this session, an unexpected decision for the market was made - to accelerate the increase in oil production by 411 thousand barrels per day in May, which is equivalent to the planned three-month production growth.
OPEC+ actions, combined with a statement by the US about imposing tariffs on products from 185 countries, have led to a nearly $10 drop in the price of Brent crude oil over the past two days. On Friday, April 4, prices fell below $65 per barrel for the first time since August 23, 2021.
At ministerial monitoring meetings, OPEC+ typically evaluates the state of the oil market and provides recommendations for further actions of the alliance. If necessary, the monitoring committee can request a full ministerial meeting of OPEC+.
Currently, the OPEC+ deal is operating within the established oil production quotas for 2025 and 2026, as well as voluntary reductions followed by only eight countries in the alliance, including the largest producers - Russia and Saudi Arabia. These eight countries have been reducing their oil output by a total of 2.2 mln barrels per day since the beginning of 2024, but from April 2025, they began gradually returning these volumes to the market. Additionally, these countries have been voluntarily cutting production by another 1.65 mln barrels per day from the spring of 2023 through the end of 2026.