The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, OPEC+, have agreed to lift oil production by 75,000 barrels per day over January levels.
According to a statement by OPEC, the decision was part of the agreement reached at an extended meeting of the group on Tuesday.
It said Saudi Arabia voluntarily agreed to cut an additional one million bpd in February and March above its current quota.
It also stated that the OPEC+ agreed not only for the production levels for February but March as well.
According to the statement, March’s production level will see an additional increase of 120,000bpd over February levels or 195,000bpd over January levels.
OPEC had in the previous meeting held in December adjusted the total production cuts to 7.2mbpd for January, from 7.7mbpd before.
But with Saudi Arabia’s additional voluntary cuts, February’s total production cuts will be 8.125mbpd, and March’s will total 8.05mbpd.
It was clear that for Saudi Arabia, there are no changes to its official output quota for either February or March, neither are there changes to the United Arab Emirates’ quotas or Iraq’s.
For OPEC, there are no changes for February to the individual quotas. All the production increases, therefore, go to the non-OPEC members, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Russia’s February production quota increased from 9.119mbpd in January to 9.184mbpd, and again increased to 9.249mbpd for March.
Meanwhile, oil prices on Tuesday rallied with West Texas Intermediate more than five per cent and Brent Crude just under five per cent.
