Kuwait Cuts January Output to Agreed OPEC Target

 

Gulf OPEC member Kuwait has reduced oil production in January to around 2.707 million barrels per day, meeting its output target under an OPEC supply cut agreement, a Kuwaiti oil official said on Friday.

 

It joins Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter and biggest OPEC producer, which also cut production this month by at least 486,000 bpd to its 10.058 million bpd target, according to a Gulf source familiar with Saudi oil policy, meaning it fully implemented OPEC's agreement to reduce output.

 

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in November agreed to implement output reductions this year as part of a global pact to limit supplies to support prices.

 

A committee responsible for monitoring compliance with the global oil production cut agreement will meet in Vienna on Jan. 21-22, although an industry source told Reuters on Friday that it would mainly discuss the mechanism to monitor compliance since no solid production data is available yet.

 

Under the OPEC deal, Kuwait agreed to reduce output by 131,000 bpd starting Jan. 1, from its October baseline production of 2.838 million bpd.

 

Kuwait produced 2.9 million bpd in December, an industry source familiar with the matter said.

 

The pledges by major OPEC producers such as Saudi Arabia and its Gulf OPEC allies Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates to comply with the cut agreement helped buoy oil prices.

 

Saudi Aramco has started talks with customers globally on possible cuts of 3 percent to 7 percent in February crude loadings as it moves to implement the OPEC agreement, sources told Reuters on Thursday.

 

Iraq said on Thursday that it has also begun implementing measures to reduce oil output in keeping with OPEC's decision and in the UAE, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has scheduled maintenance at oilfields in March and April that will cut output to meet its OPEC reduction target, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

 

OPEC agreed to output cuts as of Jan. 1 to bring production down to 32.50 million bpd, in the first such agreement since 2008.