A meeting of Opec+ ministers scheduled for 1 December has been postponed to 5 December.
Opec said the delay is because of a conflicting travel schedule for energy ministers of Mideast Gulf countries, as the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) leaders summit in Kuwait overlaps with the Opec+ meeting.
The Opec+ meeting, which was to be held online, will coincide with a decision to be taken by eight member countries on whether to press ahead with a plan to begin the phased return of 2.2mn b/d of "voluntary" production cuts to the market from January. This was to begin in October, but concerns about the strength of oil demand and price weakness prompted the group to postpone to December and then to January.
The UAE will start increasing its output from January regardless, as a 300,000 b/d increase to its official production quota kicks in over the course of 2025.
Any increase to Opec+ supply would be tempered by additional cuts that some of the eight will be making in the coming months to compensate for past overproduction. Iraq, Kazakhstan and Russia are the group's leading overproducers.
Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman on 27 November talked with Kazakhstan's energy minister Almasadam Satkaliyev and Russia's deputy prime minister Alexander Novak, Moscow's point man on Opec+ matters. A day earlier, Prince Abdulaziz met in Baghdad with Iraq's prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Novak.
The statements from both meetings emphasised "full adherence to the [current policy] agreement, including the voluntary production cuts agreed upon by the eight participating countries, as well as compensating for any excess production."
The 5 December meeting will be a third consecutive Opec+ ordinary ministerial meeting to be held virtually rather than in Vienna. The last time Opec+ held its ministerial meeting in-person was in June 2023.
