Reuters reports that its survey of oil production has revealed that total production from OPEC countries was 26.33 million barrels per day (bpd) in January.
This is 410,000 bpd lower than December last year, indicating that the cartel lost further market share to non-OPEC producers.
To compensate for the departure of Angola from OPEC, the country’s production was removed from the December figure to provide a fair comparison. Libya was found to have experienced the greatest drop in production due to force majeure being declared at its Sharara oilfield, which is one of its largest, although production was resumed later in January.
Cuts of 140,000 bpd were made by both Kuwait and Iraq as part of the latest voluntary cuts, although the latter still pumped 141,000 bpd more than the amount it set itself for this quarter. Another substantial cut was made by Iran, which despite still being sanctioned by the US, managed to keep production close to last November’s five-year high.
OPEC and its OPEC+ partners have made a number of cuts since late 2022 to support the oil market in the face of growing production from non-OPEC countries like the United States, where operators like ExxonMobil, the maker of the Mobil DTE hydraulic oil, have managed to get more from their shale assets through technological advancements.
Reuters’ survey takes information from a range of sources—such as OPEC itself, oil companies, shipping data and flow-tracking companies like Kpler and Petro-Logistics—to gain a detailed picture of the supply of oil to the market.
