LONDON/MOSCOW/DUBAI (Reuters) – OPEC members and several other oil-producing countries, known as OPEC+, are to hold a series of video conference meetings on Thursday to discuss further cuts in oil production for 2024, three delegates told Reuters.

The size of any further cuts has not yet been decided, but two delegates said they were between one and two million barrels per day (bpd) for the first quarter of 2024.

Saudi Arabia, Russia and other OPEC+ members pump about 43 million bpd, or more than 40% of global supply.

Reductions of around five million bpd, representing around 5% of global demand, are already in place.

Sources told Reuters this week that discussions among OPEC+ members ahead of Thursday’s meeting had proven difficult.

The meeting, initially scheduled for November 26, was also postponed, sources having mentioned disagreements on production objectives, in particular with the African members of the organization such as Angola and Nigeria.

Saudi Arabia, which has reduced its production by an additional million bpd since July, will not want to take on further reductions alone, estimates Helima Croft, analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

“We could envisage a scenario in which Russia and Saudi Arabia postpone their reduction until the first quarter of 2024 and bring together a coalition of individual producers ready to make voluntary adjustments,” she believes.

The OPEC+ meeting coincides with the opening of the United Nations climate summit (COP28) which is being held in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, an OPEC member country and where the future of fossil fuels will be at the heart discussions.

(Reporting Alex Lawler, Olesya Astakhova, Maha El Dahan and Ahmad Ghaddar, Blandine Hénault for the ,)

Copyright © 2023 Thomson Reuters