LONDON — OPEC+ is set to maintain oil production levels at an online policy meeting of its 22 member countries this Sunday, even as a bitter dispute over 2027 oil output capacity is due to steal the headlines when it happens. Those discussions over how to assess “minimum sustainable” output for each producer — and therefore its future quota — will dominate the agenda when ministers check in to the video conference on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025.
The alliance is expected to keep collective targets unchanged while its ministers consider a formula to determine each country’s maximum production capacity, which would serve as the basis for new quotas from 2027, according to three OPEC+ sources quoted by Reuters last month. The framework, which was initially agreed upon at a ministerial meeting earlier this year, has now been passed to the OPEC+ secretariat with instructions to turn it into a technical formula that cuts through the political obstacles blocking agreement in such a wide-ranging producer group.
OPEC+ had initially targeted a reset of baselines for no later than 2025, though the process was delayed to at least 2027 as members wrangled over the criteria and doubted third-party assessments from consultancies such as Rystad Energy and Wood Mackenzie, Argus Media’s industry reporting found. The wider OPEC+ group can sustainably pump about 47.9 million barrels per day (bpd) at the moment, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), but is currently pumping around 42.4 million bpd, underscoring the degree to which future influence hinges on how those “paper barrels” are divided.
OPEC+ quota dispute sets Gulf heavyweights on course for clash with African members
For some members of OPEC+, the capacity fight is as much about face as it is about barrels. The producer nations in Nigeria and elsewhere are pushing for higher baselines that would enable them to count a greater share of future export revenue, although outside calculations indicate they have relatively little unused capacity and have been off the mark in their efforts to hit existing targets. The United Arab Emirates, by contrast, has spent heavily developing new fields and argues that it deserves a higher official share of OPEC+ output after already securing a small quota bump in recent years.
The stakes were underscored by Angola’s action, which left the producer group in early 2024 after refusing to accept a lower output quota, amid months of friction over how African capacity was calculated and reported, and coverage of Angola’s exit from OPEC. Though Angola accounted for only a small share of the overall OPEC+ volumes, its exit underscored how mishandling baselines could erode alliance cohesion.
Those frictions compound with earlier quota reforms that gave Gulf producers much more space. A second OPEC+ recalibration in mid-2023 allowed increased production limits in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, with notional reductions to allowances for Nigeria and Angola, a Reuters review of quota changes showed. Now, for many African officials, the new 2027 capacity exercise is an opportunity to either reverse or cement that change in OPEC+ power.
OPEC+ gathering comes after 2026 quota increases were frozen
Sunday’s OPEC+ meeting is at the end of November and a fresh round of diplomatic discussions, coming less than a month after the alliance’s key exporters — Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman plus Kazakhstan and Algeria — sealed last-minute 137,000-bpd supply rise for December while holding back increases in the first quarter of 2026 on fears that a return to oversupply could be on the way. Those eight countries have raised their combined targets by about 2.9 million bpd since April, while providing far less supply in the end because some members were pumping below the levels OPEC agreed they should be.
This cautious approach signals a shift away from years when OPEC+ held back nearly 5.85 million bpd — almost 6% of global demand — through an ad hoc suite of group-wide and voluntary cuts to prop up prices. The alliance still has millions of barrels per day of idle capacity, primarily in Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners, which would provide it with significant leeway on medium-term prices regardless of whether official quotas for early 2026 are kept constant.
Participants in the oil market are closely eyeing the OPEC+ talks less because they expect any immediate change in supply and more because 2027 baselines will determine how quickly the group can move when a demand shock arrives later in this decade. This month, Morgan Stanley raised its projection for Brent crude in the first half of 2026 to $60 a barrel, pointing to the alliance’s decision last week to press pause on increasing its quotas and withering sanctions that target Russian producers — evidence investors still believe OPEC+ will manage supply aggressively even as internal rifts build.
High-stakes “theoretical” decision for now
To many ministers, the 2027 capacity exercise sounds like an abstract spreadsheet calculation. But for OPEC+ as a whole, the outcome will help determine which capitals exert influence over future production increases or emergency cuts, and how tempting it is to invest long-term in countries from Abu Dhabi to Abuja. A compromise on process — without even publishing hard numbers on where those cuts can come from — might be enough to persuade traders that OPEC+ still has room to thrash out its differences behind closed doors, while failure could deliver short-term unity around what kind of output level is appropriate but plant the seeds for future disagreements long before 2027. For now, OPEC+ seems likely to keep the barrels flowing at a similar rate while quibbling over how much each member could, in theory, pump in the years to come.
Behind the scenes, officials say the technical work on capacity will continue after Sunday’s virtual meeting, with OPEC+ economists and outside consultants plugging in updated field data and decline curves. The aim ultimately is to transform that analysis into a politically palatable 2027 baselines table—one that reconciles Gulf producers’ concerns about future investments in new capacity with the fears of African and smaller members of being left behind in more competitive oil markets.
For the moment, traders, refiners and consuming countries will also scour the OPEC+ communiqué as much for what it says about capacity and baselines as any formal decision on near-term output because they know that the real battle is over who controls tomorrow’s barrels rather than today’s.
The capacity battle, meanwhile, stems from the alliance’s earlier move this year to establish a formal process for calculating each member’s maximum sustainable production, as detailed by regional outlet Argaam, which will form the basis of 2027 baselines for all OPEC+ signatories.
