OPEC likely to boost production to 650,000 bpd

The three giant oil producers, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates seem to have bow downed before United States and agreed to increase daily output to meet the shortfall resulting from ban on Russian oil export.   

If this proposal is agreed to by the OPEC Plus ministers, it will come as a relief to the White House, which has been begging OPEC—especially Saudi Arabia—for additional oil output as the United States continues to battle high gasoline prices in the run-up to mid-term elections.

According to media reports, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has recommended an increase in production by 648,000 barrels per day (bpd) —higher than what was originally agreed.

The proposed 648,000 bpd output increase would be for July and another 648,000 bpd increase in August, all members of the JMMC were in agreement.

Under the proposal, OPEC+ would bring forward the planned September hike and spread it across July and August, resulting in 648,000 bpd increase in each of those months. There would be no planned hike, then, in September.

Until Thursday, the overarching sentiment from the masses was that OPEC’s JMMC would rubber-stamp the 423,000 bpd output increase that was already baked into the agreement.

But reports began to filter in, led by the Wall Street Journal that OPEC was considering exempting Russia from the agreement. Those reports later morphed into rumors that OPEC might agree to increase production to make up for what would surely be Russia’s lost oil production in the wake of Western sanctions, including the EU’s Russian oil import ban that was agreed to earlier in the week.

The proposal for a 648,000 bpd increase was discussed as being an overall increase for the OPEC+ group, to be divided among its members equally. In reality, there are numerous OPEC+ members that cannot meet their current quotas and are highly unlikely to meet a new, even higher quota.

Such an increase would benefit Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iraq—all of which are thought to have excess spare oil production capacity—the ability to increase production