Pumpjacks lift oil from wells at the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, California’s largest, in Fellows, near Taft, on October 17, 2025.
Robyn Beck | Afp | Getty Images
OPEC+ countries agreed to maintain group-wideoiloutput quotas for 2026 in a meeting on Sunday, and also agreed on a mechanism to assess members’ maximumoilproduction capacity,OPECsaid in a statement.
Eight OPEC+ countries, holding a separate meeting on Sunday, also have an agreement in principle to maintain a pause in their output hikes for the first quarter of 2026, an OPEC+ source and a person familiar with OPEC+ talks said earlier.
The meeting of OPEC+, which pumps half of the world’soil, comes during a freshU.S.effort to broker aRussia-Ukrainepeace deal, which could add tooilsupply if sanctions onRussiaare eased. Ministers have started a series of online meetings, two sources said.
If the peace deal fails,Russiacould see its supply curbed further by sanctions. OPEC+ groups theOrganization of the Petroleum Exporting Countriesand allies led byRussia.
Paused oil output hikes
Brent crude closed on Friday near$63a barrel, down 15% this year.
OPEC+ has pausedoiloutput hikes for the first quarter of 2026 after releasing some 2.9 million barrels per day into the market sinceApril 2025.
The group still has about 3.24 million barrels per day of output cuts in place, representing about 3% of global demand, and the Sunday meeting did not alter those.
OPECsaid the group had approved a mechanism to assess members’ maximum production capacity to be used for setting output quotas from 2027.
OPEC+ has been discussing the issue for years and it has proved difficult because some members such as theUnited Arab Emirateshave increased capacity and want higher quotas.
Other members such as African countries have seen declines in production capacity but are resisting quota cuts.Angolaquit the group in 2024 over a disagreement about its production quotas.
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