OPEC publishes new compensation schedules for four overproducing countries, overall 'debt' falls to 4.3 mln bpd, to 3.5 mln bpd for Kazakhstan

MOSCOW. Feb 2 (Interfax) - Four OPEC+ countries will be required to cut production by almost 4.333 million barrels per day (bpd) between January and June to compensate for previous overproduction, OPEC said in its updated compensation schedule.

This figure is around 240,000 bpd less than last month's "debt", which required that Kazakhstan, Iraq, the UAE and Oman compensate 4.57 million bpd between December and June.

According to the updated schedule, Kazakhstan needs to cut production by 3.488 million bpd between December and June, compared with a debt of 3.536 million bpd according to the previous schedule, Iraq must cut production by 614,000 bpd, versus 771,000 bpd previously, the UAE must compensate 193,000 bpd versus 223,000 bpd and Oman 38,000 bpd versus 40,000 bpd.

Taking into account current data on the OPEC+ compensation plan, production should fall 130,000 bpd month-on-month in February, versus the previous 293,000 bpd expected, to 37.699 million bpd. In March, the alliance's overall production quota will grow by 124,000 bpd MoM to 37.823 million bpd.

At the end of 2024, ministers from all OPEC+ countries took the decision to extend production quotas to 2025 and 2026 and confirmed this in the middle of 2025. Since then, only eight countries have had their production quotas changed - Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman all volunteered to cut their output.

Two lots of restrictions were imposed for these countries - 2.2 million bpd and 1.65 million bpd. The latter was initially in effect until the end of 2026, but after the 2.2 million bpd cut was completed ahead of time in September, the "volunteers" began actively making up the 1.65 million bpd, too, reducing production by 137,000 bpd each month in October, November and December and then opted to pause for the first quarter of 2026. The eight countries confirmed this decision at their next meeting on February 1.

OPEC has said that the ministers of the "eight" intended to be flexible and were prepared, depending on the situation on the market, for the production cut of 1.65 million bpd to be brought back either "partially or fully" as well as the cut of 2.2 million bpd.