OPEC+ failed to hit its production target yet again in February

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The OPEC+ group’s combined crude oil production in February was little changed from January and still above the overall output quota that OPEC and its allies pledged when they announced extra voluntary supply reductions, according to the latest Platts survey by S&P Global Commodity Insights.

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The survey showed total OPEC+ oil production flat in February from January at around 41.21 million barrels per day (bpd), which, per Platts’ estimates, was about 175,000 bpd higher than the overall quota.

OPEC+ members collectively decided to voluntarily cut 2.2 million bpd from the group’s production this quarter, although much of that was production cuts that were already in effect, including Saudi Arabia’s 1 million bpd voluntary cut.

Last weekend, the members of the OPEC+ alliance that had pledged the Q1 cuts announced they would roll over the supply reductions until the end of the second quarter.

Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Oman, and Russia are now cutting their respective crude oil production and exports in the first half of 2024 with extra voluntary reductions, on top of voluntary cuts OPEC+ previously announced in April 2023 and later extended until the end of 2024.

The production estimates for February have shown that some of these – especially Iraq and Kazakhstan – continued to overproduce above their respective quotas.

In the middle of February, both Iraq and Kazakhstan pledged to comply with the cuts they had announced.

OPEC’s second-largest producer, Iraq, is committed to its voluntary cut in the OPEC+ agreement and will produce no more than 4 million bpd of crude oil, Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said last month.

Non-OPEC oil producer Kazakhstan, for its part, vowed to compensate over the coming months for a lack of compliance with the cuts in January.

“Kazakhstan has always supported the initiatives of the OPEC+ member countries,” the country’s Energy Ministry said in a statement in February.