ne of President Trump’s first orders of business following the initial burst of executive orders was to declare he would ask OPEC to ramp up its oil production to bring down prices.
A statement posted on OPEC’s website on December 5 highlighted that OPEC+’s required production level for 2025 and 2026 is 39.725 million barrels per day. That statement pointed out that the required production level for Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman “is before applying any additional production adjustments”. It also noted that UAE required production has been increased by 300,000 barrels per day and added that this increase will be phased in gradually starting April 2025 until the end of September 2026.
China has been importing Iranian oil indirectly via proxies. According to StanChart, crude oil imports from Malaysia clocked in at 1.456 million barrels per day (mb/d) in June, the second-highest monthly average on record.
Iraq quickly extinguished the blaze that erupted at a storage tank at the Rumaila oil field on Jan. 24, but said the incident knocked out about 300,000 barrels a day — or 25 percent of the field’s capacity — during the following week. The country’s production averaged just over 4 million barrels a day last month, in line with its OPEC quota.
According to commodity experts, the link between lower oil prices and foreign policy objectives is not a new one: historians have drawn a link between the 1985-86 oil price crash and the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, as well as the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
Oil edged lower as traders weighed the possible fallout from President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on major U.S. crude supplier Canada and other countries. The market was also watching reports OPEC will evaluate potential changes to America’s energy policy.
One thing will have become extremely clear to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the lead-up to Donald Trump beginning his second stint as U.S. President.
Crude prices were volatile and came under pressure as the market reacted to the latest developments in U.S. trade policy. Although the tariffs the Trump administration threatened to apply on Colombia were short-lived, similar trade actions could cause ripples across global markets.
Africa’s biggest crude producer Nigeria has emerged from a years-long output slump due to improved security, creating a quandary for the government.
Global oil markets will face a widening glut in 2026 as OPEC brings back production and output from the U.S., Canada and Guyana continues to grow, the U.S. government said in its first set of forecasts for next year.