The ministers based their decision on a report on the prospects on the development of oil markets in 2022, prepared by the OPEC+ Technical Committee. According to the report, world-wide commercial stocks of oil will be at levels lower than those recorded in 2015-2019 at least until the autumn of 2022 – and that meant countries within the deal can boost their production by a further 400,000 bpd.
The Technical Committee produced three scenarios – under which OPEC+ will continue to increase production by 400,000 bpd every month until October 2022 – and 40 million barrels of oil will be released from strategic reserves in the first half of the year. A total of 13.3 million barrels will be sent back to the U.S. special petroleum reserve in the third quarter. And the oil surplus on markets will fluctuate between 1.3 million and 1.6 million bpd.
The OPEC+ decision enables Russia to increase its oil production in March by 100,000 bpd. And that means that in March, the country will have restored 90 % of the output restrictions compared to pre-crisis levels in 2020.
“For Russia, the OPEC+ decision to increase production by 400,000 bpd means that in March we can boost out own production by 100,000 bpd. And it gives us the opportunity to restore 90 % of the level of reductions in volume,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told Rossiya 24 television.
“Let me just remind everyone that in May 2020, Russia cut its production by 2 million bpd and, with due account for the decisions that have been taken, we will be back to restoring 1.8 million bpd.”
Novak said oil markets still held many unknowns.
On the one hand, the Omicron Covid variant is sweeping through many countries, but on the other hand, governments in those countries are not prepared to impose new restrictive measures.
“Many countries, for instance, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and other countries have decided against introducing different forms of restrictions,” he said. “And that will have a positive effect on restoring demand. We observe that international air travel is recovering as is consumption of oil products. The situation is different everywhere.”
