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July 9, 2025 • 14 mins

OPEC+, a coalition of some of the world’s top oil producers, surprised markets over the weekend with plans to boost production by more than half a million barrels a day. The increase comes at a time when investors are worried about oversupply.

So what was behind the decision? Bloomberg’s Joumanna Bercetche breaks it all down with Big Take host David Gura from Vienna, where members of the oil cartel and executives from around the world are gathered for the Ninth OPEC International Seminar.

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
This week, oil executives and officials from some of the
world's largest oil producers countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria
are gathering in Vienna, where OPAK, the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries, is headquartered, and the purpose.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Is to bring together is some of the biggest players
in the space.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Bloomberg's Germani Brassecci is in Vienna covering Ope's gathering, and
given what's been happening recently, there is a lot for
the group to discuss.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Remember, we are coming off the most volatile period for
oil in the last couple of years.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
We're coming on the air with breaking news. Israel has
just launched air strikes into Iran.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Massive precision strikes are on the three key nuclear facilities
in the Iranian regime.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
After that twelve day war between Iran and Israel, we
saw massive geopolitical premium get priced into the oil curve,
and here we are pretty much all of that geopolitical
premium was wiped out. Coming on the heels of another
big OPECH plus decision.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
OPEK plus, which includes even more oil producing countries, made
a surprise move over the weekend, it announced plans to
boost oil production by more than half a million barrels
a day, a big production increase at a time when
investors are worried about oversupply. Now the world's largest oil
producers are at a crossroads, and what happens next could

(01:29):
ripple through the global economy. I'm David Gerret and this
is the big take from Bloomberg News today. On the show,
what OPEC Plus's production surge says about the influence it
has on oil markets. Today, we look at what motivated
the alliance's latest move, what it means for markets, and
who actually calls the shots in the multi trillion dollar

(01:50):
oil industry. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is
a coalition that dates back to the nineteen sixties. At first,
its membership consisted mostly of Gulf states like Iran, Iraq
and Saudi Arabia, but over the years its ranks have
expanded to include countries like Ecuador, Indonesia and Nigeria, and

(02:15):
about a decade ago, an alliance called OPEK plus formed,
which includes an additional ten oil producers, including Russia and Kazakhstan.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
The purpose is to coordinate oil production policy around the
world to keep prices stable and to ensure that you're
both maximizing potential revenue for producers but at the same
time keeping prices affordable for consumers.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
For years, OPEK was the major player in the global
oil market, but it doesn't have as much influence as
it used to. The United States has become a major
player after it ramped up the extraction of shale oil
through a process known as fracking. The US is now
the largest oil producer in the world, and notably, it
is not a member of OPEC or o PECK plus.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
So as it stands today, OPEK plus their decisions still
matter hugely, but of course they're not the only game
in town.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Still, what these countries decide to do when it comes
to how much oil they produce can send shockwaves through
the global economy. That happened back in twenty twenty three
when OPEC plus decided to cut production by an additional
one million barrels a day. The cuts were meant to
rebalance the global oil supply. Crude prices had fallen and
analysts were predicting a glut ahead, and.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Therefore they took the decision to withhold barrels ie, to
withhold production from the markets, and so called these voluntary
cuts because then a group of eight producers started withholding
production from the markets per and agreed schedule, and the
whole purpose of that was to introduce again some price stability.
Initially those cuts were meant to be around for say

(03:55):
six months or so, they kept getting extended, but then
at the beginning of this year, so around on spring
of twenty twenty five, they announced that they were going
to start slowly unwinding the cuts that were introduced in
twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
In other words, OPEC plus was shifting course and boosting
production again.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
The plan was to do it gradually, bringing back slowly,
slowly a little bit more than one hundred and thirty
thousand barrels a day. But what has happened in the
last four months, they've accelerated the putback. So from May
June July they surprised the market by increasing monthly production
by more than four hundred thousand barls per day.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
That's three times the volume initially scheduled in those first
three months. Jamana says there are a number of reasons
for the recent surgeon production, among them a desire by
opek's most powerful member, Saudi Arabia, to punish members like
Kazakhstan and Iraq which exceeded their quotas. Then there's the
growing influence of non OPEC producers.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
You were seeing a huge pickup in supply from the
likes of Canada, Brazil, Guyana, so their non OPEC countries
bringing their extra production to the market, and that's obviously
got to be a concern for OPEC from a market
share perspective. So when analysts were analyzing this decision and
trying to, you know, put together the rationale for why

(05:15):
OPEC plus decided to accelerate the unwines of these vluntry cuts,
one of the clear rationals was because they felt that
they were one losing market share. Two of course they
felt that the market could handle it. And then three
and this probably isn't something that they would say explicitly,
but of course you do have a president in the
White House who repeatedly talks about his desire to see

(05:36):
lower oil prices. And I'm also going to ask Saudi
Arabia and OPEK to bring down the cost of oil.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
You got to bring it down.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
And perhaps they sense an opportunity both politically and economically
to put more barrels back into the market, but also
appease the United States.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Let me stick with that for a second. So as
you say, it's no secret that President Trump wants low
oil price and he's been pressuring OPEK to slash prices
for months now. He met with OPEC leadership on his
recent tour of the Persian Gulf. To what degree was
this a direct response to that? Of course, the US
not a party of OPEC or OPEC. Plus, how much
influence does does the US have and how much is
this attributable to what the President's been saying.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
They will not tell you directly, but I mean, for
sure they're going to be motivated and influenced by the
US and by a very vocal president sitting in the
White House. But then also don't forget that if prices
go too low, then that also backfires on some of
the drillers and the US producers as well, because already,

(06:37):
if you look at say the riccounts, the active oil
riccounts in the US this year, they're back down to
low's not seen since September twenty twenty one. And why
is that the case? Because oil prices are lower and
so if you think about it from OPI plus's perspective,
maybe they're willing to tolerate lower prices if that also
means that they're building market share and they are reducing

(07:01):
the ability of some of their big competitors in the US,
these shale drillers to also bring production to the market.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
So opek plus seems willing to deal with lower oil prices.
And this weekend's decision confirms that their members gathered on
a video conference call and it didn't take long for
them to announce that in August they will add five
hundred and forty eight thousand barrels of oil to the
market every day.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
It was a ten minute meeting, so it was fairly quick.
Every one of those members who were part of the
voluntary cutting group were in unanimous support of this decision.
There really seems to be a desire to get these
barrels back to the market now. Their justification at the
time when they put out the statement on Saturday, they
said that the market fundamentals support it. They spoke about

(07:48):
lower inventory. It seems as though opek plus the voluntary
cutters did see a window of opportunity here to bring
back those extra bowels to the market without upsetting oil
prices too much. And actually, if you look at the
price reaction, say in Brent on Monday, it barely dipped
to we're down about half a percent and actually were

(08:09):
higher on the week now since they made this decision,
which does tell you that perhaps a certain extent the
market was ready to absorb these extra bellels. But then,
of course the question becomes, this is now what happens
in a couple of months time once the seasonal demand
drivers are out of the way.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
That OPEC plus news broke on Saturday, and on Sunday,
global markets were surprised again by another move, this one
by opek's most powerful member and the world's second largest
oil producing nation, Saudi Arabia. We dig into that after
the break on Sunday, a day after OPEC plus decided

(08:52):
to boost production by more than half a million barrels
a day in August, Saudi Arabia's state owned oil company,
Saudi Aramco, announced it would raise oil prices in Asia
next month by more than expected. It would raise the
price of its most popular crude oil by one dollar
a barrel. Bloomberg'stremani Brassecci explains why that is so significant.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
That was a bit surprising and does actually reflect the
fact that ARAMCO do see healthy demands coming from those
parts of the world, and for Saudi Arabia their biggest
buyers coming from the East and coming from Asia. That
was actually quite notable. And I will tell you I've
spoken recently to the aram COO CEO to Aminaser before

(09:32):
the open plus decision, before the Iran is there a
war even and he was saying that he actually does
see the market as pretty balanced. They still see healthy
signals coming through from Asia, despite the naysayers there and
the fact that many in the industry seem to think
that demand from China will be leveling off as there's
been more of a push towards electric vehicles. But the

(09:54):
signals that Iramko seem to be picking up are strong.
Otherwise they would not have been able to push through
those extra price hikes. So that is quite notable.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
I wonder if anything stood out to you from that
conversation just about his perspective on the global oil market,
his confidence, I suppose, and they're being buyers for oil
going forward.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
One thing that I learned was he said that because
they're sitting on a three million barrel's day of extra capacity,
So spare capacity every one million provides a cushion for
a ten dollars drop in the price of oil, which
is quite notable from a revenue perspective.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Other companies do not have that to push in any
drop and prices. For us, we do have that spare
capacity that is healthy strong.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
What he was trying to say is Saudi Arabia Aroundco
can actually stomach slightly lower prices given how much spare
capacity that they're sitting on, They'll just pump more, but
at lower prices, so net net, from their perspective, it
sort of adds up.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Producers do not have that additional battles to put in
the market. We do have that additional battles and it
gives us strong benefit in terms of impact on our
net income.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
My sense was that that Wall Street's expectation is there's
going to be a surplus of oil here in the
second half of this year. Maybe a dumb question, but
where does Sadi Rabe, where did these other producers think
that the market for this oil is going to be
How confident are that they're going to be buyers for
all of this oil that they're producing.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
As of now, they seem to be pretty confident, unclear
how this is all going to pan out in a
couple of months time. So this is a time of
year where the seasonals do work in their favor. You
have global refineries operating at very high intensity, but that's
expected to subside by the end of the summer. You
have high energy demands coming out of some of these
Gulf nations because of the heat at this time of

(11:50):
the year, you know, operating air conditioning units. You have
high demand for transport fuel out of some of these
western nations. So once the seasonals are out of the way,
when you want to see what happens to demand. So
question of whether also some of the macro uncertainties in
the air, things related to terriffs, to global economy, to

(12:11):
China demand, the incremental fiscal boosts that you're going to
get from some of these big packages that being announced,
whether all of that is going to move the needle
on demand as well. Those are things that you want
to think about. Let's say you get a nuclear deal
between US and Iran, does that mean you get a
reduction and sanctions? Does that mean that this mancher of

(12:31):
maximum pressure will be released, and therefore Iranian oil, which
by the way hasn't taken a big production hits, I
should note, will be freer to be sold to all
of these other willing buyers around the world as well.
So these are questions that we just don't know. But
you mentioned Wall Street being pretty bearish, and it's exactly
because of that. The likes of Goldman, for example, see

(12:53):
supply growing at four times the speed of demand over
the next three to four quarters. And on the back
of that, and the likes of JP Morgan City are
pretty bearish on where the price of Brent gets too,
and most of them have their forecast around sixty five
sixty dollars by the end of this year.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
OPEC plus has its next meeting on August third. Jamana
says she'll be watching for a few things, namely, will
the group stay the course, will it effectively get oil
production back to where it was before it imposed those
cuts in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
The other thing to watch out for always compliance whether
or not some of those big producers, the ones that
have been over producing, we'll start cutting back ultimately for
the cohesion of the group, though all of these different countries.
These producers want to be producing as much as they
possibly can with prices as high as they possibly can, right,

(13:45):
and so this is the paradox for Opek. They're trying
to keep prices stable, but they also want to grab
on some market share. This is an environment where they
have a lot more competition than they've ever had in history.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot com slash podcast offer. If you like this episode,
make sure to follow and review The Big Take wherever
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Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.
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