Opec+ mulls delaying April oil supply restart amid market concerns

By Salma El Wardany, Fiona MacDonald and Grant Smith

  OPEC+ is considering pushing back a series of monthly supply increases due to begin in April despite calls from US President Donald Trump to lower prices, delegates said.

Global oil markets remain too fragile to revive production now, said one of the delegates, who asked not to be identified as the talks are private. No decision has been made yet and the group is split on how to proceed, said another. A decision may be finalized in coming weeks.

 

Postponing the modest hike of 120,000 barrels-a-day would mark the fourth time that the alliance led by Saudi Arabia and Russia has delayed plans to revive production halted since 2022. It currently aims to restore a total of 2.2 million barrels per day in monthly increments by late 2026.

 

Trump has urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to “cut the price of oil,” reprising a theme of his first term. Yet at $74 a barrel, prices remain too low for many OPEC members to cover government spending, and last week the group’s Secretary-General said its decisions will prioritize “the longer-term” impact.

 

In a report last week, OPEC’s Vienna-based secretariat also warned about the dangers posed by US trade tariffs. The measures “added more uncertainty into markets, which has the potential to create supply-demand imbalances that are not reflective of market fundamentals, and therefore generate more volatility.”

 

The OPEC+ alliance first unveiled its plans for gradually reviving production in June last year, but with oil demand growth slowing in China and new supplies across the Americas swelling, it has been forced to postpone the roadmap three times.

 

Proceeding with the increases would threaten to swell an anticipated oil surplus. Even if OPEC+ keeps output unchanged, global supplies will exceed demand this year by an average of 450,000 barrels per day this year, according to the International Energy Agency in Paris. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. see prices sinking into the $60s before the end of 2025.