According to a report from OPEC+’s Joint Technical Committee meeting earlier this week, the global oil market will remain in surplus this year, but the overhang has been reduced by 100,000 bpd to 1.3 million bpd.

Until national production levels have been restored to pre-pandemic levels, the cartel intends to stick to its agreement of adding 400,000 bpd in collective output to its monthly total. Many members of the organisation have been straining for months to reach the quotas set to them under the agreement that marked the beginning of OPEC and its Russia-led partners reversing the deepest oil production curbs ever implemented.

The production restrictions, as well as fewer investments in maintenance and oil exploration, significantly lowered OPEC+’s spare capacity, sparking concerns that global spare oil capacity would drop to levels not seen in more than two decades.

This might be due to OPEC+’s preference for current prices, or it could be due to the group’s spare capacity problem, which has resulted in the group’s inability to meet its monthly quotas for several months in a row.