By Ahmad Ghaddar and Olesya Astakhova
LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) -Eight OPEC+ countries are likely to further raise oil output on Sunday with the group’s leader Saudi Arabia pushing for a large increase to regain market share and Russia suggesting a more modest rise, four people with knowledge of OPEC+ talks said.
Russia and Saudi Arabia, the two biggest OPEC+ producers, have over the past years sometimes disagreed on the size of output rises but ultimately found a compromise.
Moscow would prefer the group to raise output by 137,000 barrels per day from November, the same as the increase in October, to avert putting oil prices under pressure and because it would struggle to raise output due to sanctions, according to two of the sources.
Saudi Arabia would prefer to see double, triple or even quadruple that figure – 274,000 bpd, 411,000 bpd or 548,000 bpd respectively, as it has the ability to ramp up production quickly and wants to grow market share, the sources said.
OPEC has no plans to raise output by 500,000 bpd, it said on Tuesday.
OPEC did not respond to a request for further comment. Authorities in Saudi Arabia and Russia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OPEC+ has reversed its strategy of output cuts from April to boost market share and in response to pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump seeking lower oil prices.
At their peak, OPEC+’s total output reductions amounted to 5.85 million bpd, made up of three elements – voluntary cuts of 2.2 million bpd, 1.65 million bpd by eight members, and another 2.0 million bpd by the whole group.
The eight producers plan to fully unwind one element of those cuts – 2.2 million bpd – by the end of September. For October, they started removing the second layer of 1.65 million bpd with the increase of 137,000 bpd.
The eight OPEC+ countries will hold an online meeting on Sunday, two sources said on Friday.
Goldman Sachs on Tuesday said that it expected the group to raise its quotas by 140,000 bpd.
Oil prices on Friday were on course for a weekly loss of over 7% on the prospect of a further OPEC+ supply hike, with Brent crude trading above $64 a barrel.
This is still up from a 2025 low of near $58 in April.
The 2 million bpd cut by the whole OPEC+ is in place until the end of 2026.
(Reporting by Alex Lawler, Ahmad Ghaddar and Olesya Astakhova, writing by Alex Lawler and Dmitry Zhdannikov, Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
