(Bloomberg) -- The OPEC+ meeting scheduled for this weekend has been delayed as talks ran into trouble amid Saudi dissatisfaction with other members’ oil production levels. 

Ministerial meetings will now take place on Nov. 30, OPEC said on its website, without giving a reason for the delay. Saudi Arabia, which has been making an additional 1 million barrel-a-day output cut since July, was in difficult talks with other members about their production levels, delegates said, asking not to be named because the discussions are private. 

Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 3.9% to $79.20 a barrel as of 1:43 p.m. in London.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies face an increasingly fragile picture for oil prices. Crude is down about 18% from its September peak, defying expectations that production cuts would cause a rapid tightening in markets. The outlook for next year looks even weaker, with potential for a renewed surplus in the first half. 

“I think we need a cut,” Pierre Andurand, the renowned oil trader and founder of Andurand Capital Management, said in an interview with Bloomberg television earlier on Wednesday. “The Saudis will probably want the other countries to cut as well, so I think it’s going to be a negotiation.”

 

Riyadh has been widely expected to extend its unilateral 1 million barrel-a-day curb through the first quarter of next year to keep markets in balance. But the kingdom could reverse the measure if its counterparts don’t contribute further to the supply reductions, Andurand said.

Securing the cooperation of other OPEC+ producers could be a tall order. 

At the last meeting in June, African OPEC nations Angola, Congo and Nigeria were pressed to accept lower production quotas for 2024 because their capacity has deteriorated. If these countries were subsequently asked to make further production cuts from those lower quota levels, it could be difficult to accept.  

The African countries secured the right to a review of their production capacity by external consultants, and Nigeria at least has shown recently it can surpass its new limits. It pumped 1.416 million barrels a day last month, or 36,000 barrels a day above the target for 2024.

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates has got the right from OPEC+ to increase production modestly in January in order to deploy recent capacity additions. It may be reluctant to forsake that long-awaited opportunity.

The revised meeting date of Nov. 30 will coincide with the first day of the United Nations climate talks, known as COP28, which are taking place in the UAE city of Dubai.

“If you are in OPEC+ shoes, they must be thinking that something needs to be done,” Christof Ruehl, senior analyst at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said on Bloomberg television. Yet “it will be more difficult for them to do something than people expect. It’s hard to see how they could get on the same page.”

--With assistance from Ben Bartenstein and Grant Smith.

(Updates with date of COP28 in penultimate paragraph.)

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