Opec+ agrees to delay oil hike plans until April, extends cuts into 2026

Opec+, which pumps about half the world's oil, had been planning to start unwinding cuts from Oct 2024 but a slowdown in global demand and rising output outside the group forced it to postpone plans

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Opec+ has agreed to delay plans to raise oil output until April from January 2025 and the group will also take one extra year to fully unwind the cuts by the end of 2026, Opec sources said. 

Opec+, which pumps about half the world's oil, had been planning to start unwinding cuts from October 2024 but a slowdown in global demand and rising output outside the group forced it to postpone the plans on several occasions. 

Opec+ groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies such as Russia. It started online talks on Thursday at 1100 GMT and talks were still ongoing by 1230 GMT. 

Despite the group's supply cuts, global oil benchmark Brent crude has mostly stayed in a $70 to $80 per barrel range this year and on Thursday traded near $73 a barrel, having hit a 2024 low below $69 in September. 

Opec+ members are holding back 5.86 million barrels per day of output, or about 5.7 per cent of global demand, in a series of steps agreed since 2022 to support the market. 

The steps include cuts of 2 million bpd by the whole group, 1.65 million bpd of first stage of voluntary cuts by eight members and another 2.2 million of second stage of voluntary cuts by the same eight members. 

On Thursday, Opec agreed to extend the 2 million bpd and the 1.65 million bpd of cuts until the end of 2026 from the end of 2025, the sources said. 

The gradual unwinding of 2.2 million of cuts will start from April 2025 and will last until September 2026. 

The group also agreed to allow the United Arab Emirates to raise output by 300,000 bpd from April and until the end of September 2026, instead of the earlier plan to start it in January 2025.   

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