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By Tsvetana Paraskova
The OPEC+ group left its crude oil production plan for May unchanged at its latest meeting, while OPEC, dominated by Middle Eastern producers, revised down its global demand growth estimates for 2022, in view of renewed COVID lockdowns in China and the Russian war in Ukraine. Over the past month, the major stateowned oil and gas firms in the Middle East have signed deals to work on advanced fuels and to expand vessel fleets.
OPEC+ Stays The Course Despite soaring international oil prices, the OPEC+ group consisting of the OPEC members and non-OPEC producers led by Russia decided on 31 March to leave its oil production plan unchanged in May. OPEC+ plans to raise overall production by 432,000 barrels per day (bpd) for the month of May 2022, slightly higher than the usual 400,000-bpd monthly increase because of readjustment of baseline production at some producers.
www.ogv.energy I May 2022
The alliance continued to reiterate that the market is well-balanced and the high volatility and $100-plus oil prices are the result of “ongoing geopolitical developments.” “It was noted that continuing oil market fundamentals and the consensus on the outlook pointed to a well-balanced market, and that current volatility is not caused by fundamentals, but by ongoing geopolitical developments,” OPEC said in a statement at the end of the meeting.
This was the second meeting since a key member of the OPEC+ group, Russia, invaded Ukraine. In none of the statements since the beginning of the invasion, OPEC or the OPEC+ group have mentioned the war or Ukraine, limiting themselves to referring to it as “the conflict in Eastern Europe.” The next OPEC+ ministerial meeting is scheduled to be held on 5 May, while the required production for the group in May is at 42.126 million bpd, of which the biggest producers in the alliance – Saudi Arabia and Russia – have a quota of 10.549 million bpd each.
