Seven OPEC+ Countries Hold October Required Production at 31.01 Million Barrels a Day
Seven OPEC+ countries met by videoconference on 6 September and decided to maintain September’s required production for October. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman are set 31.01 million barrels a day between them next month on our calculation. Each of those seven levels is identical to the country’s own figure in the required production table published in December 2024, before the voluntary adjustments of 2023 were applied to it.
The October table
| Country | October required production, thousand b/d | Share of the seven, percent |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 10,478 | 33.8 |
| Russia | 9,949 | 32.1 |
| Iraq | 4,431 | 14.3 |
| Kuwait | 2,676 | 8.6 |
| Kazakhstan | 1,628 | 5.2 |
| Algeria | 1,007 | 3.2 |
| Oman | 841 | 2.7 |
| Total | 31,010 | 100.0 |
Country levels are from the October 2026 required production table attached to the 6 September statement, which publishes no total and no increment column. The total and the shares are ours; the shares are rounded to one decimal and sum to 99.9.
Saudi Arabia and Russia together account for 65.9 percent of the required total on our calculation, which makes their two allocations dominant in the arithmetic of any future collective adjustment.
Back to the level the cuts were measured from
The December 2024 ministerial published a table of required production levels for each participating country, footnoted as the levels before the additional voluntary adjustments of April 2023 and November 2023 were applied. Set that column against the October table and the seven figures are the same, country by country, to the last thousand barrels a day.
These are required levels rather than observed output, so the match says the quota has come back to where it started, not that any country is pumping what it pumped in 2022. Within that limit it is the whole story of the meeting. The hold is not a pause partway up a schedule. It is the schedule arriving where it began.
One caution belongs with it. Nowhere in Sunday’s statement does the group say the unwinding is finished, and the characterisation is ours rather than the group’s.
Twelve months, nine increments, two tranches
The six increases of 2026 are the visible part: 206 thousand barrels a day for April, the same for May, then 188 thousand for each of June, July, August and September. Those add to 1.164 million on our calculation.
They were not the start. The eight countries then in the group added 137 thousand barrels a day in each of October, November and December 2025, each increment described in the statements as coming from the 1.65 million barrels a day of additional voluntary adjustments announced in April 2023, then paused increments for January, February and March 2026, in the group’s own words due to seasonality. Those three steps add 411 thousand.
That makes twelve months from the first of those increments to the last, nine of them carrying one. Across both phases the published increments total 1.575 million barrels a day on our calculation, against a tranche of 1.65 million.
The 75 thousand difference is not explained in the documents, and two things sit behind it. The group was eight countries for the first five increments and seven for the last four, so the increments do not rest on a constant base. And from the May statement onward the wording drops the 1.65 million figure and refers only to the additional voluntary adjustments announced in April 2023, so the last four increases are not tied by the group to a stated total. What the December 2024 table does establish is that whatever remains is not a cut still being carried by these seven, because their required levels are already back at the pre-adjustment column.
Note also that this was the second tranche to be unwound, not the first. The increases running through the summer of 2025 came from the separate 2.2 million barrels a day of adjustments announced in November 2023.
What the statement stopped saying
The decision runs to four short paragraphs. The one that sets October is followed by a single commitment: the seven reiterate their collective commitment to achieve full conformity with the Declaration of Cooperation.
The statement setting September, issued on 2 August, carried two more. It said the adjustments would be monitored by the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, and that the countries confirmed their intention to fully compensate for any overproduced volume since January 2024. Neither sentence appears in Sunday’s text.
The compensation period was extended in June to run until the end of December 2026, so the obligation covers October whether or not a monthly statement restates it, and the monitoring committee meets on 4 October, the same day as the group’s next meeting. An omission from one statement is not a repeal.
What it does change is what a reader can see. This month’s document publishes less about enforcement than August’s did, at the point where the schedule stops supplying its own increases and the interesting question becomes who is producing what against a quota that is no longer moving.
The eighth country
The group was eight until the spring. The statement of 5 April named Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman. From the statement of 3 May onward the text reads seven countries, and there is no UAE row in the October table.
What that means for membership is not settled. OPEC’s own Member Countries page still lists the United Arab Emirates among 12 member countries, records it as joining in 1967, and names only Ecuador, Indonesia, Gabon, Qatar and Angola under suspended, withdrawn or terminated membership. S&P Global Ratings, in its research update of 4 September, describes an official exit from the organisation and from OPEC+ on 1 May 2026 and says the country is no longer required to follow the bloc’s production quotas and limits. The published membership record and that account do not presently align, and no press release in this year’s index announces a withdrawal.
The narrower point is enough for the October arithmetic: the UAE is not among the countries whose production these statements set, and has not been since May.
Why it matters: A quota that has risen every month bar three since October 2025 has stopped rising, with all seven required production levels back at their pre-additional-voluntary-adjustment levels. That removes the monthly increment which has been the moving part of this group’s supply schedule for a year, and it does so for seven producers whose two largest members account for almost two thirds of the required total. With the schedule fixed, the variable that decides how much oil actually reaches the market is conformity, which is the part of the process this month’s statement says least about.
Outlook: The next meeting is 4 October and the monitoring committee sits the same day, so the enforcement language absent from this statement has an obvious place to reappear. Three things to watch: whether the hold extends into November, whether the compensation and monitoring sentences return to the text, and what the committee reports on conformity now that the quota is no longer moving. Further out, the June ministerial affirmed the importance of completing a maximum sustainable production capacity assessment for all participating countries, to be used as the reference for 2027 production baselines. That assessment, rather than the monthly increments, is the next process capable of resetting these numbers.
Sources: OPEC, S&P Global Ratings.
