OPEC & OPEC+

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a group consisting of 13 of the world’s major oil-exporting nations.
Countries that belong to OPEC include Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela (the five founders), plus the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
OPEC was founded in 1960 to coordinate the petroleum policies of its members and to provide member states with technical and economic aid.
OPEC is used to work as a cartel and fix prices in a favourable band. It could bring down prices by increasing oil production and raise prices by cutting production.
The 2014 oil crisis, which was accentuated by oversupply of crude, brought down prices below $30 a barrel. Since then, OPEC has been working with non-OPEC countries like Russia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Sudan and South Sudan to fix the global prices and supply.
Known as the “OPEC Plus” arrangement, this alliance kept production lower and pumped up the prices.

Russia expects to support an increase in oil production by the OPEC+ group of another 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from February at next month’s summit of the leading global oil producers.
Oil prices are trading above $50 per barrel, after coming under pressure this week from concerns that new fast-spreading variants of the coronavirus will lead to reduced fuel demand.
Moscow views an oil price between $45 and $55 per barrel as the optimum level to allow for recovery of its oil production, which has been significantly reduced as part of the OPEC+ supply deal.
Russia, other leading oil producers and the OPEC+ group, agreed to reduce output to support the global oil market as the COVID-19 pandemic has weakened fuel demand.
Since the agreement on a record global supply cut in April, OPEC+ has progressively reduced the cuts and is expected in January to release an extra 5,00,000 bpd into the market.

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