OPEC+ Pumped Less Oil Than Agreed In October

The OPEC+ group’s compliance rate with the oil production cuts rose to 116 percent in October from 115 percent in September, as the alliance, especially the OPEC members in the pact, failed to pump to their collective quota, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting internal data it had seen.

The ten OPEC members bound by the pact complied with their total share of the cuts at a massive 121 percent in October, up from a 115 percent compliance rate in September. The non-OPEC oil producers in the OPEC+ agreement saw their compliance fall to 106 percent last month, down from 114 percent in the previous month, according to the data seen by Reuters.

The monthly OPEC report already showed last week that the cartel’s ten members in the OPEC+ agreement continued to struggle with reaching their collective ceiling.

OPEC’s crude oil production rose by 217,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 27.453 million bpd in October, but still fell short of the cartel’s share of the 400,000-bpd total output hike of the OPEC+ group.

Under the OPEC+ deal, the ten OPEC members bound by the OPEC+ pact should be raising their combined production by 254,000 bpd each month.

Yet, estimates from secondary sources in OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) published last week continued to show what analysts, tanker-tracking firms, and previous OPEC monthly reports showed: the cartel has been undershooting its collective production quota—mostly because of a lack of capacity at some members to pump crude to their respective quotas.

African OPEC members Nigeria, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea not only fell short of their quotas, but they also saw their respective output drop in October compared to September.

The leader of the non-OPEC group in the pact, Russia, saw its crude oil and condensate production rise in October for a second consecutive month, to stand at 10.843 million bpd last month, according to Bloomberg estimates based on data from the Russian energy ministry. The data does not discriminate between crude oil and condensate production, so the market and analysts assess crude output by estimating condensate production levels. Russia’s condensate production—estimated at around 800,000 bpd-900,000—is not part of the OPEC+ production cuts, so it’s not easy to assess how much crude oil Russia is really pumping.