Markets
OPEC+ Pumped 2.04 Million More Barrels a Day in October
OPEC+ crude output rose 2.04 million barrels a day in October 2026 to 41.23 million, OPEC's monthly report showed on November 11, led by Saudi Arabia.
The oil that was missing for most of the year is coming back. OPEC's monthly oil market report, published on Wednesday, November 11, showed that crude production by the countries in the OPEC+ alliance rose by 2.04 million barrels a day in October to 41.23 million, according to the secondary sources the group uses to track its members. That is still below the 42.72 million pumped in February, before the war in the Middle East disrupted Gulf supply, and it reverses much of the cut forced on Gulf producers by the war.
Saudi Arabia drove most of it, and the two ways of measuring its output disagree. The kingdom told OPEC directly that it produced 10.563 million barrels a day in October, up from 8.372 million in September, an increase of about 26%. The secondary sources put the figure at 9.194 million, and a Bloomberg survey at 9.2 million, a gap of about 1.37 million barrels a day that neither OPEC nor the Saudi energy ministry had explained, House of Saud reported. Iraq reached 4.888 million barrels a day, its highest since the war began, while Iran slipped to 1.9 million, the lowest in Bloomberg's survey records since 1989.
Demand is not keeping pace with that supply this year. OPEC expects world oil demand to grow by only about 200,000 barrels a day in 2026, to 105.7 million, with consumption in the OECD countries falling. It kept its forecast for 2027 unchanged at growth of 2.6 million barrels a day, to 108.3 million, and nudged its estimate for global economic growth this year up to 3.1%. Supply from producers outside the alliance is forecast to rise by 600,000 barrels a day in each of the two years.
Prices have already moved a long way. OPEC's reference basket averaged $112.12 a barrel in October and Brent's front month $108.34. Since then, hopes of a US-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have pulled Brent down to $91.49 at Tuesday's settlement, and it traded about 1.2% lower at $91.63 early on Thursday in Asia. Aramco's chief executive, Amin Nasser, has told analysts the company could restore about 10.4 million barrels a day within days and 12 million in under three weeks if asked.
The next decision point is the OPEC+ ministerial meeting on November 29. With output recovering faster than demand, the question there is whether the group lets production keep climbing toward its pre-war level or holds some barrels back to defend prices. For anyone reading these reports, the Saudi gap is the detail to watch: when a producer's own figure and the independent estimates diverge by more than a million barrels a day, the market usually trusts the independent ones.