The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the coalition including Russia, known as 'OPEC Plus' (OPEC+), will hold their first in-person meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak next week in Vienna, Austria, to discuss plans for production cuts.
According to Bloomberg and other sources, the OPEC Secretariat announced on the 1st (local time) that "the regular OPEC+ meeting will be held in person at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna on the 5th."
OPEC+, consisting of 23 major oil-producing countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia, has held only online virtual meetings since March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak began.
At this regular meeting, OPEC+ is expected to seriously discuss measures to reduce crude oil production.
Recently, major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have suffered significant losses due to the decline in international oil prices.
The benchmark Brent crude oil price surged to over $125 per barrel following Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, but then fell to $85 amid aggressive interest rate hikes by central banks worldwide and economic slowdowns in the United States and China.
In response, OPEC+ agreed at the meeting held on the 5th of last month to reduce the October crude oil production target by 100,000 barrels per day. However, global investment banks such as JPMorgan Chase have forecasted that OPEC+ may need to cut production by at least 500,000 barrels per day to prevent further price declines.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak the day before, following Russia's declaration of annexation of four occupied territories in Ukraine.
One day after the news of sanctions against Deputy Prime Minister Novak, a key figure in OPEC+, the OPEC Secretariat announced that it will hold an in-person meeting in Vienna for the first time since 2020.
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