OPEC postpones its joint technical committee meeting initially scheduled for Monday to Wednesday and its joint ministerial monitoring committee meeting from Tuesday to Thursday, Bloomberg reported, quoting people familiar with the discussion. According to the sources, the reschedule is aimed to give the group’s committees more time to assess the impact of a new COVID-19 variant on the market. The sources noted that OPEC would meet its OPEC+ allies on Wednesday and Thursday as planned to decide their next production policy.
OPEC+ is working on tapering their production curbs by 400,000 bpd each month. The group has left the door open to delaying the supply increase in the case that factors like resurging COVID-19 infections hurt demand. On Friday, Brent crude futures plunged $9.50 (11.6%) to $72.72 per barrel. It was the benchmark’s sharpest one-day drop since April 2020. Traders were spooked by the emergence of a new coronavirus strain in southern Africa, which prompted countries to reimpose travel bans from the region, dampening the demand outlook.
