OPEC+ Compliance With Oil Cuts Slips To 109% In July

The OPEC+ group saw its overall compliance with the production cuts at 109 percent in July, down from 113 percent in June, Argus reported on Thursday, citing an internal report meant for the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the alliance.

The decline in overall conformity levels was mainly the result of OPEC’s leader and top producer, Saudi Arabia, unwinding the last 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) part of its unilateral extra cut of 1 million bpd implemented between February and April.

In June, the OPEC+ group’s overall conformity with the oil production adjustments stood at 113 percent, including Mexico, OPEC said after last month’s meeting.

At the July meeting, after leaving the market hanging for two weeks, OPEC+ finally reached a compromise deal to unwind the remaining cuts and allow, as of May 2022, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, and Kuwait to have higher reference production levels.

In July, the compliance among OPEC and non-OPEC members of the pact was at 116 percent for OPEC and at 97 percent for non-OPEC led by Russia, according to the report for the JTC seen by Argus.

OPEC’s compliance slipped from 120 percent in June, while the non-OPEC compliance rate was flat month over month.

OPEC’s crude oil production averaged 26.657 million bpd in July 2021,

up by 637,000 bpd from June, the cartel’s Monthly Oil Market report showed last week. Most of the increase was due to higher production in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Nigeria, while output fell in Angola and Venezuela, according to OPEC’s secondary sources. Saudi Arabia boosted its production by a massive 497,000 bpd to 9.403 million bpd in July as the Kingdom restored all of the 1 million bpd unilateral cut.

Russia, the leader of the non-OPEC group in the OPEC+ alliance, saw its oil production rise for the first time in three months in July as OPEC+ continued to ease the production cuts and planned maintenance at some Russian oilfields ended.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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