MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

OPEC+ Raised Oil Production by more than 400,000 BPD in October

The compliance of the OPEC+ group was at 116% last month, with OPEC complying 124% and the non-OPEC countries part of the deal complying 103%.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com – Led by production increases in Saudi Arabia and Russia, the OPEC+ group raised its October oil output by 490,000 barrels per day (BPD), TASS news agency quoted the International Energy Agency as saying in its monthly report on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia’s oil production rose to 9.8 million BPD in October from 9.68 million BPD in September, with the Kingdom still complying with its quota. Russia pumped 9.91 million BPD in October, up from 9.82 million BPD in September, with a compliance rate of 92%, TASS notes.

The compliance of the OPEC+ group was at 116% last month, with OPEC complying 124% and the non-OPEC countries part of the deal complying 103%.

The high over-compliance of the ten OPEC members bound by the pact is due to a large extent to the inability of several OPEC producers to pump to their quotas.

OPEC’s crude oil production rose by 217,000 BPD to 27.453 million BPD in October but still fell short of the cartel’s share of the 400,000-BPD total output hike of the OPEC+ group, according to the secondary sources in OPEC’s monthly report published last week.

Under the OPEC+ deal, the ten OPEC members bound by the OPEC+ pact should be raising their combined production by 254,000 BPD each month.

Yet, estimates from secondary sources in OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) continued to show what analysts, tanker-tracking firms, and previous OPEC monthly reports showed: the cartel has been undershooting its collective production quota—mostly because of a lack of capacity at some members to pump crude to their respective quotas.

While OPEC’s top producer and the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, pumped nearly in perfect alignment to its quota and raised crude production by 110,000 BPD, several African members not only fell short of their quotas, but they also saw their respective output drop in October compared to September. Nigeria, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea saw their output decline last month. The steepest drop was in Nigeria, whose production fell by 45,000 BPD to 1.354 million BPD, per OPEC’s secondary sources. Nigeria’s output was more than 200,000 BPD below its cap of 1.6 million BPD.