OPEC+ Adds 188,000 Barrels a Day for September
Saudi Arabia, Russia and five other OPEC+ members are raising output by 188,000 barrels a day starting in September, completing the phaseout of the 1.65 million barrel voluntary cut agreed in 2023.
Seven OPEC+ members agreed at an online meeting on Sunday to raise September production quotas by about 188,000 barrels a day. The deal was signed by Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan and Oman, with a joint statement describing the move as an “adjustment of production by 188 thousand barrels per day.”
The figure is small next to everything the group has done over the past three years, but the timing matters. The September quota completes the phaseout of the voluntary 1.65 million barrel a day cut agreed in 2023, the second of three reduction packages OPEC+ rolled out between late 2022 and late 2023, when total supply was cut by about six million barrels a day.
What exactly is being phased out
The order matters because the packages are not being unwound all at once. The group changed strategy in 2025 and started returning barrels to the market in small monthly steps, which makes September the point where the second package runs out completely. The first package, and the third, a collective cut, remain in place.
The list of signatories has changed too. Eight countries agreed to the 2023 voluntary cut; only seven signed the September decision, since the United Arab Emirates left OPEC+ on May 1, 2026. The exit of one of the Gulf’s fastest growing capacity holders leaves an open question for negotiations still to come.
“OPEC+ has completed the unwinding of its voluntary cuts. The next challenge is managing the surplus that could emerge once export flows normalize,” said Jorge Leon, an analyst at Rystad Energy.
The surplus he is describing is not a this week problem. Barrels restored on paper still have to be physically shipped out, and that is exactly where things have stalled all year.
Why a higher quota does not mean higher shipments
Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have made exports harder for some members, so the monthly increases through 2026 have largely stayed on paper. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries most of the Gulf’s exports, remains constrained, despite a brief recovery in shipping traffic after the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding in June.
Russia shows the scale of the gap. Russian production stands at about nine million barrels a day, against a quota of 9.8 million. The roughly 800,000 barrel a day shortfall is more than four times the entire September increase the group just approved. In other words, a single member is not delivering what its existing quota already allows it to, in a volume large enough to cancel out the effect of the collective decision. The cause is repeated drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure.
Something similar holds more broadly. Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS, said many OPEC+ members cannot produce as much as their official quotas allow because of declining production capacity, which blunts the impact of raising the targets.
“Today’s decision changes little in the short term since the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained. The real market impact will come once normal export flows resume,” Leon said.
There is one exception. Iraq has signaled it wants to significantly raise output, which, if the strait reopens, would fill the market faster than the 188,000 barrel figure alone suggests.
What comes next in the fourth quarter?
The statement says nothing about production policy for the last three months of the year, nor does it mention the possibility that further increases could be paused. Analysts had largely expected the September increase, and some had also bet on a pause.
Leon’s base case is a fourth quarter halt while the group prepares for negotiations over 2027 quotas:
“Now that the production restoration campaign is over, OPEC+ has little reason to rush further supply changes. Our base case is a pause in the fourth quarter, while the group prepares for the 2027 quota negotiations.”
That preparation has already begun. The organization is currently assessing member countries’ production capacity to establish the baselines that will be used to calculate 2027 quotas. It is a technical exercise with political stakes: a country credited with higher capacity gets a higher quota, so the starting numbers are contested as fiercely as the cuts themselves. Analysts at DNB Carnegie are already warning that the group faces potentially difficult conversations over new quotas starting next year.
For the market, that means the next meaningful signal will not be the monthly quota decision, but two figures still to come: how many barrels from the Gulf are actually loaded once traffic through the Strait of Hormuz returns to normal, and what baseline capacity levels the group agrees to credit its members for 2027.
