According to the Shana correspondent, the 23 OPEC member countries, which held their 17th meeting briefly and voted to continue the gradual increase in production, seem to face the challenge of increasing supply or keeping the current production figure in today's meeting (Friday, July 2).

The daily increase of 500,000 to 1 million barrels per day of OPEC+ supply is currently under consideration and Russia and Kazakhstan are named as the main supporters of this scenario.

Informed sources say Russia is under intense pressure from Russian companies to ramp up output.

As chairman of the OPEC+ ministerial meeting, Saudi Arabia has reportedly not agreed to increase supply more than agreed to the oil market for August.

The amount of production reduction of the OPEC+ coalition with the fulfillment of commitments in July will reach 5.75 million barrels per day, which means the same figure as stated in the agreement of April 20, 2020 for 2021.

Other speculations, however, suggest that OPEC+ members will discuss extending supply restrictions after April 2022 at today's meeting. The decision was made after the OPEC Joint Technical Committee discussed significant ambiguities and the risk of oil supply glut in the year 2022.

Members of OPEC+ have shown they are predictable and there is a state of ambiguity. We have to wait until the end of this meeting to see whether the 23 members of OPEC+ will reach a consensus today or not.

The oil and energy ministers of OPEC+ pledged to curtail their output in three stages at the 10th Extraordinary Meeting which was held via video conference on April 12, 2020.

In the first phase, the reduction of daily production of 9.7 million barrels per day for May and June 2020 was on the agenda; the supply cut of 7.7 mbd of crude oil for 6 months from July 1 to December 31, 2020 was planned for in the second phase of the agreement, and in the third phase, it was decided to reduce OPEC crude oil production by 5.8 million barrels per day for a period of 16 months from January 1, 2021 to April 30, 2022.