The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has extended its crude oil production cuts to 2024. Saudi Arabia alone will make a voluntary and deep cut of one million barrels a day from July, in an attempt to push up oil prices.

Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ producers (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies) made an announcement after their meeting in Vienna on Sunday: they will maintain the current oil production cut until the end of 2023 and extend it to the whole of 2024.

This is an attempt to halt the fall in oil prices this year. In the fifteen months between March 2022 and June 2023, the price of a barrel of Brent, the benchmark oil in Europe, fell by around 50%, from 130 to 76 euros.

In October, the organization had already agreed to a reduction to two million barrels a day from November. Furthermore, by surprise, in April they approved another voluntary adjustment of 1.6 million barrels per day.

Saudi Prince Abdelaziz bin Salman said that the new set of production targets is "much more transparent and much fairer".

This organization, which many analysts categorize as a "cartel", represents around 40% of the world's crude oil production, which means that any decision made within the group has immediate repercussions at international level, especially for countries that only import and whose state budgets did not foresee successive or abrupt cuts.

Although this agreement is the result of a joint decision, the distribution of the cuts was controversial, with many African members initially resisting efforts to reduce their production baselines.

Countries like Angola and Nigeria, which have been struggling for years to meet existing production targets after years of little investment, were reluctant to reduce production. However, the final report revealed that this measure should bring production targets into line with actual production without impacting the production capacity of either country.

The United Arab Emirates, for its part, was authorized to increase production targets by around 200,000 barrels per day to 3.22 million.

The Russian giant may also have its production targets reduced, depending on the conclusions of a review of current production levels by independent experts. Russia's energy minister, Alexander Novak, expressed his confidence and believes that the organization always manages to "find common ground" for all members. (Expresso/RFI)