By AHMAD GHADDAR, MAHA EL DAHAN AND OLESYA ASTAKHOVA
LONDON/DUBAI—OPEC+ has agreed to accelerate oil production hikes for a second consecutive month, raising output in June by 411,000 barrels per day, the group said on Saturday, despite falling prices and expectations of weaker demand.
Following an online meeting lasting just over an hour, the producer group announced the supply increase, saying the fundamentals of the oil market were healthy and inventories were low.
Oil prices fell to a four-year low in April below $60 per barrel after OPEC+ announced a bigger-than-expected production boost for May, and as US President Donald Trump’s tariffs raised concerns of global economic weakness.
OPEC+ sources have said Saudi Arabia is pushing OPEC+ to accelerate the unwinding of earlier output cuts to punish fellow members Iraq and Kazakhstan for poor compliance with their production quotas.
The hikes also follow calls from Trump on OPEC+ to raise output. Trump will visit Saudi Arabia later in May.
In December, eight OPEC+ countries that have been implementing the group’s most recent output cut of 2.2 million bpd agreed to gradually phase it out in monthly increases of about 138,000 bpd from April 2025.
The June increase from the eight will take the total combined hike for April, May and June to 960,000 bpd, representing a 44 percent unwinding of the 2.2 million bpd cut, according to Reuters calculations.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 lost more than 1 percent on Friday to $61.29 a barrel as traders braced for more oil from OPEC+.
Oil prices will fall on Monday due to the OPEC+ news amid trade tensions and concerns about economic growth, said UBS’s analyst Giovanni Staunovo.
“We continue to call this a ‘managed’ unwind of cuts and not a fight for market share”, he said. – Reuters
