After the speech of Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia, Alexander Novak, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, and Diamantino Azevedo, President of the OPEC meeting and Mineral Resources and Petroleum minister of Angola, and hearing a report from the OPEC Secretariat, the 23 OPEC+ members will discuss oil production for April at a closed-door meeting.

Prior to the meeting, there were reports of a row between Saudi Arabia and Russia over oil production. Russia wants to increase oil output and easing of a production reduction agreement, and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, believes that caution should be exercised in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yesterday's meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) ended without any recommendations to today's OPEC+ ministerial meeting, and the decision regarding the group’s April output has been left to today's meeting.

There are fears that the Saudi-Russian dispute, which dates back to March 2020, will be repeated today, marking dark days for oil, like what was seen in the market back in April 2020 when WTI crude fell to historic lows to minus $37.6 per barrel. OPEC+ producers have been cutting oil production since May 2020 to prevent a sharp drop in oil prices and shun negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At their last meeting, which lasted two days, OPEC+ members, while offering a limited production increase for Russia and Kazakhstan in February and March 2021, agreed on a daily production reduction of 7.125 million barrels for February and 7,05 mbd for March 2021. Saudi Arabia also announced at the meeting that it would voluntarily reduce production by one million barrels per day in February and March.

Will today's meeting be a challenging one? Will OPEC+ production reduction be eased? Will Saudi Arabia take back the voluntary reduction of 1mbd or part of it? Will the current situation continue without any changes in production? Were those who had failed to fulfill their commitments regarding production cuts make up for their failure? Will we have to wait until the end of the meeting to get answers to these questions? OPEC+ has proven in recent meetings that it is unpredictable.