VIENNA – The gradual loosening of OPEC+’s grip on global oil supply entered its sixth consecutive month on Saturday, as the cartel’s core producers agreed to pump 188,000 more barrels per day in September into markets where Brent crude has remained above $100 for the past two weeks.
Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman approved the latest increment at their monthly review meeting, adding to a rollback of voluntary cuts that has together returned more than a million barrels a day to global supply since March. The seven countries announced 1.65 million barrels per day in combined voluntary production cuts in April 2023, a measure intended to stabilize a crude market that had been falling. Saturday’s increase is the sixth step in reversing that commitment, and the latest in a sequence that began before the most recent uptick in crude prices.
The statement from the group used the same language deployed at each of those monthly meetings: the producers would “flexibly adjust their production in line with evolving market conditions.” No formal announcement emerged about what happens beyond September. The group confirmed only that it would meet on September 6 to determine October production levels, leaving the endpoint of the rollback explicitly undefined.
The backdrop against which this decision lands is a crude market operating well above the levels that prompted OPEC+’s original restraint. Brent topped $100 when Houthi forces struck Saudi tankers in the Red Sea in late July and has held at that level since. Under the cartel’s traditional logic, elevated prices argue for restraint — more supply pushes the price down toward levels that reduce member revenues. That OPEC+ has continued adding supply at six-figure monthly increments despite prices above its historical preference floor suggests the calculus has shifted: the seven countries appear more concerned with recapturing market share than with defending any particular price.
For Saudi Arabia in particular, the dynamics remain contradictory. The kingdom’s economy contracted 4.8 percent in the second quarter, its worst performance since the COVID-19 period, as Strait of Hormuz disruptions depressed export volumes even as the per-barrel price stayed elevated. Adding supply now, when shipping constraints are limiting how much crude Riyadh can actually move, means the September increase may not translate to proportional revenue gain for the country most central to the cartel’s price management. The gap between what Saudi Arabia is permitted to produce and what it can profitably ship matters more right now than the quota itself.
The voluntary cut mechanism the seven countries are unwinding is a layer of production restraint separate from OPEC+’s formal quota framework, which governs the organization’s broader membership of more than 20 countries. The April 2023 commitment of 1.65 million barrels per day was deepened by additional voluntary reductions announced at the end of 2023. Saturday’s rollback addresses this accumulated commitment, but the group’s statement did not specify how much of the total remains in force after September’s addition, leaving the gap between nominal and actual restraint difficult to calculate from public information alone.
CGTN reported the September figure as 188,000 barrels per day, consistent with the range applied in each of the previous five monthly increments. Cumulatively, the six increases since March have restored substantial volume — enough, under normal conditions, to weigh on prices. That they have not done so reflects the competing pressure from Houthi operations on Red Sea shipping, which has introduced a cost and disruption premium into the crude market that the additional OPEC+ supply has not yet been able to offset.
Outside the cartel’s control, the supply picture has also shifted. Argentina broke its monthly oil production record in July as the Vaca Muerta shale formation in Patagonia expanded. Non-OPEC growth running alongside the OPEC+ rollback creates compounding supply-side pressure in a market where demand, driven by summer travel and persistent industrial activity, has so far absorbed the additions without a visible surplus building.
What the past six months have established is a baseline of cartel cohesion. Saudi Arabia, Russia, and their five co-signers have moved in sequence at each monthly review without public disagreement — a discipline the cartel had conspicuously failed to maintain during earlier episodes of internal overproduction disputes, including tensions with Kazakhstan over compliance with its own targets. Whether that coherence holds through the September 6 review will be the next test.
What the current cadence has not answered is where it ends. The cartel’s formal statement at each meeting, including Saturday’s, offers the same deliberately opaque commitment to flexibility rather than any measurable endpoint. The question for October is whether Brent above $100 gives the seven countries enough revenue cover to pause and observe the market’s reaction to a full year of cumulative increases, or whether the logic of reclaiming production share pulls them to continue. That question was the one outstanding piece of business Saturday’s meeting left unresolved.
