By Ahmad Ghaddar and Alex Lawler
London (Reuters) – Eight OPEC+ countries who meet on Thursday will focus on convincing Kazakhstan to stop exceeding his outputquotum and his plans to compensate overproduction while the group is gradually gaining production walks, two delegates told Reuters.
Record Kazakh output has made several other members of the group angry, including top producer Saudi Arabia, sources have told Reuters. OPEC+ urges the Central Asian country, among others, to make further cutbacks to compensate for surplus production.
“Tomorrow’s meeting is only to make the new Kazakhstan minister of the importance of complying with his required production and compensating for the surplus,” said one of the delegates. Both refused to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the case.
The Ministry of Kazakh Energie and OPEC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comments.
Last month the president of Kazakhstan Erlan Akenzhenov appointed the new Minister of Energy after his predecessor was appointed head of the newly established Atomic Energy Agency of the country.
Eight members of OPEC+, a group that includes the organization of the Petroleum -Exporting countries and allies led by Russia, are planned to increase oil production in May by 135,000 barrels per day.
The group is expected to continue with this plan, according to both sources on Wednesday, after similar comments on Tuesday of other OPEC+ delegates.
The May walk is the next increase in a plan agreed by Russia, Saudi Aarabia, the VAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria, Kazakhstan and Oman to gradually relax their most recent output reduction of 2.2 million BPD, which came into force this month.
OPEC+ also has 3.65 million BPD at other output reductions until the end of next year.
This week, Russia ordered the Black Sea Terminal who used the oil export of Kazakhstan to close two of his three berths, a movement that is generally expected to lower the production of the country.
An OPEC+ Ministerial Committee, with the authority to recommend the larger group changes in the production policy, was initially planned to meet each other on April 5, although one source said that this could also take place on Thursday.
(Additional reporting by Mariya Gordeyeva; Edit by Tomasz Janowski)
