According to Suhail al-Mazrouei, the energy minister for the United Arab Emirates, the OPEC+ group will continue with its plan to begin tapering its collective production cuts by 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) to reach a total cut of 5.8 million bpd.
While the oil markets have stabilised after a rocky period that saw prices go negative at one point, the price remains stubbornly low at around $40 per barrel. Production in Libya has also returned recently following a ceasefire among the various factions in the country, and with the country exempt from the OPEC+ deal, some wonder if the rest of the group will need to rethink their plans to compensate.
Speaking at the Energy Intelligence Forum, however, Mazrouei said the plan was very clear, and to his knowledge, it had not been changed. He also said:
“We in OPEC+ have a plan. We believe that this is the calculated volumes…for what it will take to balance the market. We are hoping that countries will slowly increase their production. We do not want to see a spike in one country that leads to other countries not behaving.”
There appears to be a growing consensus that the demand for oil may rebound to a degree next year. At the same time, US shale operations like those of ExxonMobil, which also makes derived products like Mobil gas engine oil, are regarded as being unlikely to quickly bounce back to the same record levels of production that we saw in 2019.
