OPEC and its partners agreed on Sunday evening to "the biggest drop in production in history" , in the hope of driving up oil prices in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic and despite tensions between Moscow and Ryad.
The meeting "ended with a consensus of + OPEC producers on production declines from May," wrote on Twitter the Saudi energy minister Abdul Aziz bin Salman.
His Kuwaiti counterpart Khaled al-Fadhel confirmed the "historic deal to reduce production in OPEC + member states by almost 10 million barrels per day, starting May 1".
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The Mexican representative Nahle Rocio Garcia also praised Sunday on Twitter "the unanimous agreement of the 23 participating countries," speaking of a "reduction of 9.7 million barrels of oil" from May.
According Bjornar Tonhaugen analyst Rystad Energy, "OPEC + managed today to reach an historic agreement to achieve the greatest decline in production in history." "Even if production cuts are less than what the market needed, the worst is avoided for now," said his colleague Magnus Nysveen.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) resumed a videoconference started on Thursday with the OPEC + cartel led by Russia, the world's second largest producer.
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For them to take place, Ryad and Moscow had reopened dialogue after a price war started after their last conference, on March 6 in Vienna, Austria, at OPEC headquarters.
The two exporters had been surprised in the meantime by the rapid spread of the coronavirus, which had penalized demand in recent weeks, at a time when the supply of crude was already strongly in surplus.
After long negotiations, Friday at dawn, OPEC and its partners had agreed on a reduction in May and June of world production to 10 million barrels per day, according to OPEC. But Mexico, which found the effort demanded excessive (production reduction of 400,000 barrels per day), had not given the green light to the agreement.