OPEC raised its crude oil production by 285,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 27.72 million bpd in November as it continues to ease the cuts per the OPEC+ deal, but the overall output of the 10 OPEC members in the pact was still below the quota for last month.
OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) showed on Monday that total output rose to 27.717 million bpd. Excluding the November production of the three OPEC members exempted from the OPEC+ agreement—Iran, Libya, and Venezuela—the remaining OPEC producers fell short of the 24.047 million bpd quota for the cartel for November.
Combined, Iran, Libya, and Venezuela pumped a total of 4.239 million bpd in November, leaving the other ten OPEC members with 23.478 million bpd in oil production, below the 24-million-bpd ceiling for the month.
In November, Saudi Arabia raised its oil production the most, by 101,000 bpd, generally in line with its 110,000-bpd monthly increase in the OPEC deal. Iraq and Nigeria saw the second and third-largest increases in production, according to the secondary sources OPEC uses to track output. Although Nigeria recovered its output from October, its November production at 1.42 million bpd was more than 200,000 bpd below its quota of 1.649 million bpd.
OPEC has been undershooting its target for months due to a lack of capacity and investments in African members Angola, Nigeria, Congo, and Equatorial Guinea. OPEC+ has also pumped less than the collective quota.
While OPEC+ says its production should rise by 400,000 bpd each month, the actual supply increase is smaller as some African OPEC members have been significantly underperforming because of a lack of spare capacity and investments. Between August and November, OPEC+ added 1.04 million bpd in total to its production, which was nearly 600,000 bpd below the target for the four months, according to Reuters surveys cited by columnist Clyde Russell.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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