OPEC+ is losing its grip on setting oil-market terms as wars, sanctions, infrastructure attacks and shipping constraints increasingly drive prices instead of production quotas. Riyadh and Moscow have gone quiet during the current crisis, and internal strains, from the UAE's exit to a widening Saudi-Russian rift, are undermining the alliance's coordination.
A quieter alliance in a louder crisis
OPEC+ once moved oil prices before its ministers even sat down, with a Saudi comment or a Russian signal enough to add several dollars to Brent. That command over the market has since become diluted: the group still holds vast reserves and most of the world's spare capacity, but it increasingly reacts to events rather than shaping them.
On September 6, seven OPEC+ members, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman, decided to hold their September production requirements steady for October, with the next meeting set for October 4. That administrative continuity stands in contrast to a market facing impaired flows through the Strait of Hormuz, attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and pressure on tanker availability.
A different response than 2022
The contrast with the last major crisis is stark. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Brent had moved above $105 per barrel, and the market waited on OPEC+ to decide whether to maintain its scheduled 400,000-barrel-per-day increase. Even amid a geopolitical crisis touching one of its two principal powers, the alliance remained the recognized center of oil-market decision-making.
Today's crisis is arguably more threatening to physical Middle Eastern supply, yet OPEC+ has offered only short virtual meetings and repeated pledges of market stability. Analysts still expect quiet bilateral contact between Riyadh and Moscow to continue, but the absence of a joint public assessment during a supply crisis reads to the market as a signal of strategic disagreement or reduced operational freedom.
Internal fractures widen
The UAE's departure from the group in May showed that a large producer with expanding capacity could judge that freedom outside OPEC+ was worth more than influence within it. Iraq is pushing for a higher quota tied to its added capacity, while Venezuela has reportedly weighed its own future in the organization under pressure from the Trump administration.
OPEC+ spent much of 2026 unwinding the 1.65-million-bpd layer of voluntary crude oil cuts introduced in 2023 in an effort to defend market share. But wars, sanctions, damaged infrastructure and export constraints have kept several producers from delivering their allocated increases, widening the gap between quota policy and physical reality.
Riyadh and Moscow's interests once overlapped when coordinated cuts supported prices without threatening either producer's market position. That alignment has frayed as Russia manages war-related damage and sanctions pressure while Saudi Arabia defends both its export income and its reputation as the world's most reliable supplier.
OPEC+ faces no danger of sudden collapse, and its spare capacity remains critical to the market. But its visible passivity through a supply crisis this severe suggests an alliance that still meets and talks about stability without setting the market's terms.
Source: Oilprice.com
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