Russia Claims OPEC+ Has Not Discussed Delaying Its Oil Supply Increase

OPEC+ has not discussed delaying the increase in its oil supply currently planned to begin in April, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Monday.

Earlier in the day, reports emerged that the OPEC+ group, comprising OPEC and a dozen non-OPEC producers led by Russia, is mulling over postponing the gradual increase in oil supply.

The alliance is considering pushing back the start of the easing of the cuts despite calls from U.S. President Donald Trump that OPEC needs to lower oil prices, Bloomberg reported on Monday, quoting OPEC+ delegates.

The OPEC+ group is divided on how to move forward with the planned easing of the production cuts, one of the delegates told Bloomberg.

Another delegate said that the oil market remains in too fragile a state to bring back production now.

OPEC+ has not discussed delaying the planned increase in supply, Russia’s Novak said today.

“We recently held a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) at which we did not take any decision on that matter,” Novak was quoted as saying by Russian media.

April “is still the case” for OPEC+ to start bringing supply back, Novak said, adding that no other discussions have been held.

At the JMMC meeting early this month, OPEC+ said that it would not change its current plan to begin gradually unwinding the cuts from April.

The JMMC, the panel that takes stock of oil market developments and proposes courses of action to the ministers of the OPEC+ group, doesn’t take decisions on production levels—these are taken by the OPEC+ ministerial meetings.

At the previous ministerial gathering in December, the alliance decided to delay the start of the easing of the 2.2 million bpd cuts to April 2025, from January 2025. The group also extended the period in which it would unwind all these cuts into the following year, until September 2026.