Bloomberg reports that a panel of OPEC+ ministers couldn’t reach an agreement on whether to delay January’s oil-output increase.

Most participants in an informal online discussion on Sunday evening supported maintaining the production curbs at current levels into the first quarter, said a delegate. 

Unless the agreement is revised this week, they will restart about 1.9 million barrels a day of halted output, potentially pushing the global market back into surplus and undermining the recent surge in crude prices. 

“Saudi Arabia will have to lean hard to get an agreement,” said Mohammad Darwazah, an analyst at research firm Medley Global Advisors LLC. “There have been particularly acute rumblings of dissatisfaction with the status quo from Abu Dhabi.”

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies made vast production cuts during the depths of the pandemic to offset a historic collapse in fuel demand. The alliance had planned to ease some of those curbs at the start of 2021, in anticipation of a global economic recovery.