The OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee will hold a meeting on Monday and while it’s not likely to shake up the oil market, discussions will highlight the importance of continuing to monitor a market that is plagued with concerns about the U.S. and European banking crisis and a potential economic recession.
Since then, however, oil suffered a sharp selloff in mid-March that pulled prices for U.S. CL.1 CLK23 and global benchmark BRN00 BRNM23 crude to their lowest since December 2021, with banking woes feeding worries about a recession that would weaken energy demand. As concerns surrounding the banking crisis eased, oil prices rebounded last week and look to post a second weekly rise.
The disruption of 450,000 barrels per day of Kurdish oil exports will also likely “bolster the monitoring committee’s conviction that no downward adjustment [to production] is warranted at this time,” the strategists at RBC Capital Markets said. A legal dispute in Iraq between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central government in Baghdad led to the disruption of crude transported via pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
The next OPEC+ ministerial meeting will be held on June 4. OPEC+ last met in December and decided to continue with a 2 million-barrel production cut that began in November. Russia announced in February that it would cut its crude production by 500,000 barrels a day in March in retaliation to European price caps and sanctions. New reports earlier this month said that Russia plans to keep its production cuts in place through June.