On Thursday, world oil prices posted records since the fall of 2018. The euphoria on the commodity market was caused by the events that took place during the OPEC+ meeting.

Thus, the prices for Brent and WTI crude oil during the trading session on Thursday turned out to be above the level of $76 per barrel.

Due to a decrease in demand for black gold, provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the OPEC+ alliance has reduced production by 9.7 million barrels per day (b/d) since May 2020. Later, when the world began to return to a normal life, the restrictions were adjusted, and by July of this year they amounted to 5.76 million b/d. The reference point for the indicator was taken in October 2018.

It was planned that at the meeting on Thursday, OPEC+ will take a unanimous decision on further easing of restrictions, starting in August 2021.

However, during the meeting, the OPEC+ Ministerial Monitoring Committee recommended that the participating countries increase their black gold production by 0.4 million barrels per day per month from August to December 2021 inclusive. The committee also recommended that the production regulation agreement be extended until the end of next year.

According to the OPEC+ plan, 2 million barrels per day of raw materials will return to the market from August to December, and by the end of the year, the member states of the organization will reduce production by only 3.7 million barrels per day.

The final approval of all the recommendations made by OPEC+ was planned at the general meeting of the alliance on Thursday at 16:30 UTC, but the committee meeting unexpectedly began to drag on. The reason for the delay was the disagreement of the representatives of the UAE and Kazakhstan with the proposed baseline for the production cuts. As a result, the meeting of the alliance ended without reaching a consensus, and further negotiations were postponed to Friday. Thus, the meeting of the monitoring committee will take place on July 2 at 13:00 UTC, and the OPEC+ ministerial meeting will take place at 14:30 UTC.

Experts believe that the volume of increased production of black gold turned out to be below market forecasts and insufficient to balance supply and demand.

At the same time, OPEC+ representatives are confident that at the current production level, the oil deficit will reach 2.3 million b/d in the 4th quarter. Despite the permanently increasing number of those infected with the delta strain in some countries of the world, the commodity market today is trying in every possible way to ignore this information.