Sunday. A video call. No cameras, no cameras, just eight oil ministers and a number.
188,000 barrels a day.
That's what Saudi Arabia, Russia and five other OPEC+ members are expected to add to production for September.
Sounds routine.
It isn't.
Because right now, the Middle East is at war.
The Strait of Hormuz has been half-paralyzed by Iran.
Russian oil facilities are getting hit by drones almost weekly.
And yet OPEC+ is still raising the tap.
Rewind to 2022.
Oil prices were sinking.
So OPEC+ slashed nearly 6 million barrels per day across three rounds of cuts.
Then in 2025, they flipped the script — slowly turning the tap back on.
This September hike would close out round two of that unwind.
One more chapter in a three-year saga.
Raising the target and raising actual supply are two very different things.
Many OPEC+ members simply can't pump what their quota allows anymore.
Why?
So the headline number goes up.
The oil on tankers? Barely moves.
Brent crude has climbed above $88 a barrel — up more than 22% in just the last month.
Not because supply is tight on paper.
Because traders don't trust the paper.
Every OPEC+ quota hike now gets read next to a war ticker, not a spreadsheet.
Here's the part that should worry OPEC+ more than any drone strike.
In May, the UAE walked out of its production quota entirely.
Abu Dhabi had spent years building capacity it could no longer justify capping.
So it left.
Iraq, meanwhile, is publicly pushing to pump more than its share.
Analysts are already calling next year's quota talks "potentially difficult."
Translation: the group that controls a third of the world's oil supply is starting to disagree with itself.
September's hike likely wraps up the second cut-reversal package.
After that, OPEC+ has to decide something much harder — brand new production ceilings for 2027, based on what each country can actually pump, not what it wishes it could.
Think about that for a second.
The cartel that moves global oil prices with a single phone call…
is now being outpaced by war, drones and its own broken infrastructure.
The quota says one thing.
The Strait of Hormuz says another.
And the price at the pump is listening to the second one.
That's all for now!
