Iraq News Now

Shafaq News/ OPEC+ is discussing a delay in a planned outputincrease next month as oil prices hit their lowest in 9 months, three sourcesfrom the producer group told Reuters on Wednesday.

Oil prices LCOc1 have been falling together with other assetclasses on concerns about a weak global economy and particularly soft data fromChina, the world’s biggest oil importer.

Last week, the group looked set to proceed with a 180,000barrel per day (bpd) hike in October, but market volatility from oil facilityshutdowns in Libya and a weak demand outlook have raised concern within thegroup, one of the sources said.

There were suggestions to delay the increase, one of thesources said. Another said a delay was looking highly possible.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries andthe Saudi government communications office did not immediately respond torequests for comment.

Eight members of the OPEC+ – which includes its allies – arescheduled to raise output by 180,000 bpd in October as part of a plan to beginunwinding their most recent layer of output cuts of 2.2 million bpd whilekeeping other cuts in place until the end of next year.

Brent crude traded 1% higher at $74.47 a barrel at 1104 GMTon Wednesday, rising on the news of the potential delay, but remained at itslowest since December.

Prices have experienced high volatility in recent weeks as astandoff between rival factions in OPEC producer Libya over control of thecentral bank led to a loss of at least 700,000 bpd of production.

Prices slumped by about 5% on Tuesday on news that apossible deal to resolve the conflict was in the works.

Weak Chinese demand and a slump in global refining marginswhich could translate into refiners processing less crude, have also weighed.

“While the APAC region was supposed to carry a majority ofthe growth this year, China’s underperformance has dented 2024 growthprojections and has continued to trail both 2023 crude import and refinerythroughput levels,” RBC Capital analyst Helima Croft said in a note.