“OPEC+” is about to reach an agreement on production quotas

The “OPEC+” alliance is about to reach a settlement with oil-producing countries on next year’s production levels. It comes after the league was forced to postpone a key meeting scheduled for Sunday due to disagreements over its production targets.

Angola and Nigeria, both members of the Organization of the Petroleum Producing Countries (OPEC), aim to increase their share of oil production, officials said.

The postponement of the “OPEC+” meeting (which includes OPEC and other allies, including Russia) from November 26 to November 30 caused a sharp drop in oil prices.

An unnamed source told Reuters he was “99% confident the OPEC+ alliance could reach a deal on November 30”.

Two other sources said a deal was close, while a fourth said discussions were continuing.

Aduda Gabriel Tanimu, Nigeria’s representative to OPEC, told Reuters on Thursday that he was not aware of any disagreements with other OPEC+ members over his country’s production targets.

Many analysts said they expect OPEC+ to extend oil supply cuts next year or increase supply to support prices.

The market is also waiting to see whether Saudi Arabia will extend an additional voluntary production cut of 1 million barrels per day and Russia will extend an additional 300,000 barrels per day of production cuts, which are scheduled to end at the end of December.

Notably, several countries, including Nigeria and Angola, changed their output targets at the most recent OPEC+ meeting in June after years of failing to meet previous targets.

This comes after the two countries accepted production quotas of 1.28 million barrels per day for Nigeria and 1.38 million barrels per day for Angola, which reflected reduced production capacity in both countries due to a lack of investment and operational disruptions.

Oil prices fall

Oil prices fell at the close on Friday as a temporary truce between Israel and the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip that included a prisoner swap faded, but prices posted their first weekly gain in more than a month. .

The Brent crude oil futures contract settled down 84 cents, or 1%, at $80.58 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.56, or 2%, from Wednesday’s closing price of $75.54.

On Thursday, with West Texas Intermediate crude not settling due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, both contracts posted their first weekly gains in five weeks.