Brent nears $93, US WTI ticks higher after OPEC+ pushes back output hike, extends cuts through 2026 | Stock Market News

Oil prices rose on Thursday after OPEC+ decided to delay its planned output increase by three months to April 2025, and extend the full unwind of production cuts by a year until the end of 2026.

Brent crude was up 38 cents, or 0.53%, to $72.69 a barrel at 10:56 a.m. ET, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) rose 36 cents, or 0.53%, to $68.90 a barrel.

OPEC+, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus allies including Russia, had been planning to start unwinding cuts from October 2024 but slowing global demand and booming production outside of the group forced it to postpone the plans on several occasions.

“There were questions coming into the meeting as to whether there was cohesion or not (among OPEC+), they are definitely coming out of this unified but this also shows the challenging supply landscape they have before them while trying to prop up this market,” said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital in New York.

The gradual unwinding of 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of cuts will start from next April with monthly increases of 138,000 bpd, according to Reuters calculations, and lasting 18 months until September 2026. OPEC+ pumps around half the world’s oil.

“This was the only option they (OPEC+) had available unless they were prepared to suffer the consequences of lower prices,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank.

“They reiterate that these barrels will indeed come back,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB. “It’s a limited time frame. This means there is no upside to the oil price in the next couple of years.”

Elsewhere, a larger-than-expected draw in U.S. crude stockpiles last week also provided some support to prices.

And in the Middle East, Israel said on Tuesday it would return to war with Hezbollah if their truce collapses and its attacks would go deeper into Lebanon and target the state itself.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has travelled to Qatar and Israel to kick-start the U.S. president-elect’s diplomatic push to help reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal before he takes office on Jan. 20, a source briefed on the talks told Reuters.

Eight OPEC countries will extend their “voluntary adjustments” of 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of March, the Vienna-based group said in a statement following a virtual meeting.

After that, those cuts “will be gradually phased out” on a monthly basis until the end of September 2026, the group said, adding this is “subject to market conditions”.

Without a new agreement, the eight countries were set to begin increasing production beginning in January to gradually return it to 2023 levels.

Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already twice pushed back the production increases that were set to have begun in October and then in December.

The International Energy Agency said last month that even if the OPEC cuts remain place, global supply will exceed demand by more than one million barrels per day next year.

OPEC nations are currently holding back six million barrels of oil a day, including the 2.2 million barrels a day of output that they had been discussing putting back on the market.

On Thursday, the cartel decided to extend two other tranches of cuts by one year, until the end of 2026, the group said.

The OPEC members decided at an online meeting to postpone production increases that had been scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. The plan had been to start gradually restoring 2.2 million barrels per day over the course of 2025.

That process will now be pushed back to April 1, 2025 and production increases will gradually take place over 18 months until October 2026.

OPEC , which includes Saudi Arabia as the dominant member of the OPEC producers’ cartel, and Russia as the leading non-OPEC member in the 22-country alliance, have imposed several sets of cuts to agreed output to support prices.

Oil prices have been slack due to weaker than expected demand from China as well as increased production from countries like Brazil and Argentina that aren’t in OPEC .

Among the beneficiaries of the current state of the oil market are U.S. motorists, who have seen gasoline prices fall to their lowest in 2 1/2 years to near $3 a gallon.

Oil analysts have been busy reducing their estimates for demand for next year, meaning that OPEC could remain in a bind well into 2025.