How much oil will be blocked in the OPEC+ countries

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to RIA Novosti and the Prime news agency on the prospects for the OPEC+ policy in the context of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

According to him, if the conflict in the region does not stop by early April, any OPEC+ decisions on general production quotas will be meaningless.

"The best thing that can be done is to remove the remaining voluntary restrictions from countries outside the Gulf ahead of schedule, that is, first of all, from Russia, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman (in total, after the April increase, they will amount to 0.44 million barrels per day) and suspend the mechanism for compensating for previously allowed overproduction," Belogoryev said.

He explained that in February, the total OPEC+ oil production was 42.7 million barrels per day, including 23.6 million barrels inside the Persian Gulf (excluding Oman). The production of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, which comply with voluntary restrictions, is 20.3 million barrels per day.

"By April, the outgoing production capacity of these four will range from 8 to 9 million barrels per day, depending on whether it is possible to overcome the insurance crisis in the Red Sea and to what extent Iraq will be able to resume pipeline supplies to Turkish Ceyhan," Belogoryev added.

At the same time, up to 1.5 million barrels per day of Iranian exports will remain locked in the Gulf, as well as all the main free production capacities that OPEC+ had before the conflict began, he stressed. Nevertheless, the analyst noted, given the attacks on the CPC pipeline, only Russia has the real potential for additional short-term production growth, but this growth will also be far from instantaneous.