Opec+ ministers have delayed their key meeting to set 2025 production policy to 5 December as several participants from the Gulf will be attending this weekend’s 1 December GCC summit in Kuwait City. The Opec+ meeting, which will be held online, comes against a backdrop of bearish market sentiment with broad expectations now indicating that the alliance’s ‘Group of Eight’ will delay phasing-out 2.2mn b/d of ‘voluntary’ production cuts into Q1 next year.
If market consensus proves right, and Opec+ chooses not to throw a last-minute surprise, then the cuts will be eased starting at 180,000 b/d from April 2025. This would be the third delay to the plans first laid out in June (MEES, 7 June) to gradually taper from October, but subsequently pushed back twice to January amidst faltering oil prices (MEES, 6 September & MEES, 8 November). (CONTINUED - 982 WORDS)
