Nigeria, Others Plan Additional 500,000bpd Oil Production Cut

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are considering a recommendation to cut an additional 500,000 barrels per day of crude production through the first quarter of 2020, with an option to extend it for the whole year.

OPEC ministers met on Thursday in Vienna, Austria, to discuss their portion of the deal, with Russia and nine other non-OPEC partners scheduled to join the talks on Friday.

Nigeria’s delegation, led by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva, included the Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Mallam Mele Kyari.

Kyari is attending the meeting in his capacity as Nigeria’s National Representative at OPEC, according to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

S&P Global Platts reported on Thursday that they had yet to agree how to distribute the cuts, leaving the market wondering how much supply would actually be withdrawn.

It said its survey of OPEC production released on Thursday found that the group was already over-complying with its current supply curbs by some 368,000 bpd below agreed quotas, mostly by Saudi Arabia.

The proposal calls for the OPEC+ coalition to meet again in the first week of March to review the deal and extend it, if warranted, through the rest of 2020.

“By then we will have a better understanding of the market’s development and forecasts of summer demand and supply,” Russian energy minister Alexander Novak told reporters.”

“We really do see some risks of oversupply in first quarter connected with seasonal drought of demand,” he added.

The President of the OPEC Conference and Venezuela’s People’s Minister of Petroleum, Manuel Fernandez, noted that three years ago, the oil market was in a perilous condition.