OPEC+ Raised August Output by 188,000 Barrels. Several Outlets Reported a Cut.

OPEC+ increased August quotas by 188,000 barrels per day. It was not a cut.

The OPEC+ August 2026 production increase was agreed at a virtual meeting on 5 July 2026 by the seven countries still bound by the April 2023 voluntary adjustments: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman [S1]. Saudi Arabia and Russia each took an identical 62,000 bpd share, lifting Saudi Arabia’s required production to 10.416 million bpd and Russia’s to 9.887 million bpd for the month [S5][S6].

A meaningful share of the readers arriving at this page have read the opposite. Aggregated and machine-assembled coverage of the same decision has repeatedly framed the 188,000 bpd figure as a cut, and the confusion is not entirely the fault of the outlets: OPEC’s own press release never once uses the word “increase” to describe what it did [S1]. The correction matters commercially, because an investor who reads “cut” and an investor who reads “increase” will position in opposite directions on the same sentence.

The second correction is larger and almost nobody is making it. OPEC+ is raising quotas its members cannot physically produce. In June 2026 Saudi Arabia pumped 7.34 million bpd against an implied target of about 10.29 million bpd — a gap of roughly 2.95 million bpd — and the wider group with production targets sat 7.51 million bpd below its collective ceiling [S3]. The August adjustment is therefore substantially a paper barrel: a number in a schedule, not a cargo on the water.

Last verified: 31 July 2026.

The decision at a glance

Did OPEC+ Cut or Increase Production for August 2026?

It increased it. There is no ambiguity in the substance, only in the wording.

The seven countries are engaged in unwinding — OPEC’s term is “phase out” — a set of voluntary production cuts they first announced in April 2023. Every monthly step of that unwind removes a slice of the cut, which raises the ceiling each country is permitted to produce against. The 188,000 bpd agreed on 5 July is the fifth such step in five months, and the third of that exact size [S8][S13].

Xinhua’s headline was the most precise of the wire coverage: OPEC+ agreed to “raise oil production cap by 188,000 bpd in August” [S21]. The word “cap” is the accurate one. What moved was a ceiling, not a flow.

The clearest documented misreadings sit in syndicated aggregator output. IndexBox published write-ups of both the June and the July decisions that render the identical 188,000 bpd move as a production cut, describing the group as having agreed a reduction and framing the “phase-out of voluntary production adjustments” as a step down from previous output levels [S14][S15]. The direction is inverted. The same inversion is reproduced by automated summarisers pointed at the primary release, which is the strongest evidence that the source language, not the outlets, is the root cause.

What OPEC’s Press Release Actually Says

Here is the operative sentence, verbatim:

“In their collective commitment to support oil market stability, the seven participating countries decided to implement a production adjustment of 188 thousand barrels per day from the additional voluntary adjustments announced in April 2023.” [S1]

Read that at speed. “Production adjustment” is directionless. “From the additional voluntary adjustments announced in April 2023” is the clause that carries the direction, and it is doing an enormous amount of work: the 188,000 bpd is being taken out of the cut, which puts it into production. Nothing in the sentence says up.

The word “increase” appears exactly once in the release, and not as a description of the decision. It appears in the flexibility clause, where the seven reaffirm “the importance of adopting a cautious approach and retaining full flexibility to increase, pause or reverse the phase out of the voluntary production adjustments” [S1]. That is a sentence about the pace of the unwind, and it sits three lines below the number, which is precisely where a fast reader or a summarisation model will collide with it.

This is house style, not a one-off. The 3 May 2026 release announcing the June adjustment uses the identical construction — “a production adjustment of 188 thousand barrels per day from the additional voluntary adjustments announced in April 2023” — with the same absence of a direction word [S2]. The OPEC Secretariat in Vienna, under Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais, has been publishing a monthly production decision in language that requires prior knowledge of the April 2023 tranche to parse correctly. For a general reader, and for the machines now writing a large share of commodity coverage, it does not parse.

For the standing architecture behind these allocations — baselines, spare capacity and the compliance record — see Saudi Arabia’s OPEC quota, which owns that explainer. This page covers the August 2026 decision itself and the reporting error attached to it.

What Are OPEC+ Voluntary Cuts?

Voluntary cuts are reductions announced by a subset of OPEC+ members outside the group-wide quota table. Two tranches are live: 1.65 million bpd announced in April 2023, and a second tranche announced in November 2023. Eight countries originally signed the April 2023 tranche; seven remain [S1].

“Voluntary” describes the announcement mechanism, not the enforcement. Each country declares its own share, but the totals are folded into the Declaration of Cooperation and monitored by the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), the standing OPEC+ body that reviews conformity and compensation. The 5 July release explicitly places the voluntary adjustments under JMMC monitoring and reaffirms an intention “to fully compensate for any overproduced volume since January 2024” [S1].

That compensation mechanism is the quiet half of the story. Members who overproduced against their targets owe the group make-up barrels — negative quota — later. At the 7 June 2026 meeting the seven extended the deadline for delivering that compensation to the end of December 2026 [S7]. Extending a repayment schedule while simultaneously raising the ceiling is not a contradiction, but it is a tell: the group is managing an accounting problem as much as a physical one.

The interaction between allocation and price sits at the centre of Riyadh’s calculation. See how oil prices transmit into the Saudi economy for the fiscal channel, and Saudi OPEC strategy for how the kingdom has historically traded volume for price.

The Five Monthly Increases, in Order

The August decision is the fifth consecutive monthly increase. The sequence began two days after the war started on 28 February 2026, and the step size fell in May when the United Arab Emirates left the group.

Sources: OPEC press releases [S1][S2]; Al Jazeera [S11][S12]; The National [S9].

Three things fall out of the table. First, the cumulative war-era addition to quotas is 976,000 bpd — under 1% of pre-conflict global supply, which the IEA put at roughly 108 million bpd before late February [S4]. Reuters described the April-to-July total as “almost 800,000 bpd”, which is the same arithmetic one month earlier [S8].

Second, the step size did not fall because the group turned cautious. It fell because the UAE left OPEC and OPEC+ effective 1 May 2026, taking its share of the tranche with it. OPEC+ held its first meeting without the UAE on 3 May [S11]. Anyone still reporting “eight OPEC+ countries” is working from pre-May boilerplate. The structural consequences of that departure are covered separately in the UAE’s OPEC exit and Saudi Arabia’s swing-producer leverage.

Third, the residual does not tie out cleanly. Reuters reported roughly 379,000 bpd of the original 1.65 million bpd tranche still outstanding once August takes effect, and described the group as on pace to finish the unwind around the end of the third quarter [S8]. At 188,000 bpd a month, 379,000 bpd needs two more steps, not one. Either the group accelerates in September, or the completion date slips into the fourth quarter. OPEC does not publish a running ledger of the tranche, so the discrepancy cannot be resolved from the primary source.

Is OPEC+ Actually Producing Its Quota?

No — and the gap is the largest in the alliance’s history.

The International Energy Agency’s July 2026 Oil Market Report puts June output and the variance against target for each of the seven as follows.

Actual output and variance as published by the IEA [S3]; implied target derived as output minus variance. The derived Saudi target of 10.29 million bpd matches the 10.291 million bpd allocation OPEC set for June in its 3 May decision, which validates the arithmetic [S11].

Read the Saudi row again. The kingdom holds a 10.29 million bpd allocation and produced 7.34 million bpd. That single line is roughly three times the size of the entire five-month cumulative increase. Iraq’s shortfall alone, at 2.39 million bpd, is more than twelve times the August adjustment.

Only two members were at or above target: Kazakhstan, a chronic overproducer whose Tengiz expansion has repeatedly outrun its allocation, and Oman, whose small onshore output was largely untouched by the Gulf shipping crisis. Every member exposed to the Strait of Hormuz was massively short.

Be precise about the cause, because most commentary is not. Saudi Arabia is below quota in mid-2026 because it could not ship, not because it chose not to pump. The IEA’s June report recorded Saudi output at 6.59 million bpd in May before the partial reopening of the strait [S4]; the July report shows the recovery to 7.34 million [S3]. This is a logistics constraint expressing itself as a compliance statistic. The Hormuz bypass through the Red Sea and the east–west line from Abqaiq to the Red Sea running at capacity are the reason the number is 7.34 and not lower — see Aramco’s war-quarter results for how that infrastructure performed.

Why Is OPEC+ Raising Quotas When Production Is Falling?

Because the quota decision and the supply outcome have come apart, and the group has reasons to keep the schedule moving anyway.

Four rationales are visible in the record and in the group’s own language.

Compensation arithmetic. The 5 July release says the adjustment “will provide an opportunity for the participating countries to accelerate their compensation” [S1]. A higher ceiling makes it mathematically easier for a member with an overproduction debt to deliver make-up barrels without breaching its allocation. When the ceiling is unreachable anyway, this is a bookkeeping benefit rather than a physical one.

Optionality on the recovery. Gulf oil exports rose by 6.5 million bpd in June to 16.1 million bpd, still far below the 24 million bpd pre-war average [S3]. If the strait normalises quickly, members with restored logistics need headroom already in place. Raising the ceiling in advance costs nothing while the constraint binds and saves a negotiation when it lifts.

Market share. Saudi Arabia cut its August Arab Light official selling price to Asia by the largest margin in more than two decades, set on 6 July, the day after the quota decision [S20]. Note the sequence carefully: traders attributed that cut to Hormuz normalisation and oversupply, and it was priced roughly two weeks before the Bab al-Mandeb disruption and the 25 July strike on Yanbu. The OSP cut and the later escalation are not the same story and should not be read as one.

Demand is weakening. OPEC trimmed its 2026 oil demand growth forecast by 20% in its July report, the third consecutive downward revision, while raising its 2027 forecast by 12% to 1.94 million bpd [S18]. A group that expects a soft 2026 and a firmer 2027 has an incentive to restore paper capacity now, quietly, rather than argue about it later.

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi Minister of Energy, framed the June decision in terms that fit all four: “The world needs every molecule of energy, and every form of stabilisation to this energy” [S9]. Alexander Novak, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister and its OPEC+ representative, took an identical 62,000 bpd share for Moscow — the Saudi-Russian parity in every monthly step is the visible signature of the Riyadh-Moscow axis that now steers the group without Abu Dhabi.

Giovanni Staunovo of UBS put the market read plainly: the seven “kept unwinding their production cuts as widely expected”, but “production is probably still below the group’s targets” [S8][S19]. Ole Hansen of Saxo Bank added the physical caveat — “restarting production after prolonged shutdowns takes time” [S19].

What the OPEC+ August 2026 Production Increase Actually Changes

Less than the headline implies, and in a specific way. The OPEC+ August 2026 production increase moves a ceiling; it does not move a cargo.

A quota decision moves prices through two channels: the volume channel, where additional barrels actually arrive and depress the physical market, and the signalling channel, where the decision tells traders what the group intends. In normal conditions the two point the same way. Since March 2026 they have separated.

The volume channel is close to dead. When the marginal producer is 2.95 million bpd below its ceiling, moving that ceiling by 62,000 bpd changes nothing about what loads at Ras Tanura. Barrels are returning to the market in mid-2026 because Gulf shipping is recovering, not because a quota moved. The 6.5 million bpd month-on-month jump in Gulf exports in June is thirty-five times the entire collective August adjustment [S3].

The signalling channel is very much alive, and it is the one that should be traded. Each monthly increase tells the market that the seven intend to complete the unwind rather than pause it, that they are not defending a price floor with volume restraint, and that when logistics normalise the ceiling will already be high. That is a bearish medium-term signal delivered in a market whose spot price is being set by war risk. It is also why the OSP cut and the quota rise landed within a day of each other: both are Riyadh telling Asian refiners it intends to compete on volume when it can.

The practical instruction for a reader is to stop treating the monthly OPEC+ headline as a supply event. Until the quota-versus-actual gap closes, it is a statement of intent. The supply event is the tanker count.

Why This Matters for Vision 2030

Saudi Arabia’s fiscal machinery does not run on quotas. It runs on the product of realised volume and realised price — a product whose quarter-by-quarter decomposition into price and volume effects we set out separately — and in 2026 both sides of that product are being set by the war rather than by Vienna. The OPEC+ August 2026 production increase adds 62,000 bpd of Saudi headroom to a schedule the kingdom was already 2.95 million bpd short of filling.

The kingdom is carrying an allocation nearly 3 million bpd above what it can ship. That is not a diversification story; it is the sharpest available illustration of the dependency Vision 2030 was designed to reduce. When Aramco cannot move crude through Hormuz, the state’s revenue base contracts regardless of how generous the quota schedule is, and the budget absorbs the difference. The oil dependency paradox is that the transformation programme’s funding is most exposed precisely when the diversification narrative is most needed.

There is a second-order consequence for the kingdom’s market authority. Riyadh’s leverage inside OPEC+ has always rested on spare capacity — the credible ability to add or withhold barrels. Spare capacity is only leverage if it can reach a buyer. With the UAE outside the system and pumping without constraint, and with Saudi export routes constrained, the swing-producer role is temporarily notional. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman’s consolidation of the energy portfolio gives Riyadh unusually centralised decision-making over an unusually weak hand.

For the regional comparison — who in the Gulf is actually producing and exporting through this period — see the GCC oil and gas benchmark and Saudi Arabia’s oil export profile.

Reconciling the Output Numbers: Three Series, Not One

A large share of the confusion in 2026 OPEC coverage comes from splicing incompatible measures into a single trend line. Three distinct series are in circulation, and they do not describe the same set of countries.

All figures million bpd. Sources: Reuters via Al Jazeera [S13]; IEA [S3][S4]; OPEC MOMR via The National [S10]; Reuters survey via Egypt Oil & Gas [S16]; Bloomberg survey [S17].

Two specific traps follow.

The 42.77 to 20.79 collapse is not one series. The 42.77 million bpd February figure is OPEC+ alliance-wide. The 20.79 million bpd March figure is OPEC members only, from OPEC’s own monthly report, and represents a fall of 7.88 million bpd — 27% — from an OPEC-only February base of about 28.67 million bpd [S10]. Placing the two side by side implies a 22 million bpd collapse. The real OPEC-only collapse was 7.88 million; the real OPEC+ trough came later, at 33.13 million in May [S13]. The National itself printed both figures in a single article without flagging the basket change [S9].

The June rebound to 18.75 million bpd is not a further decline. It is the Bloomberg survey of the eleven remaining OPEC members after the UAE’s exit, and it is a rise of 2.34 million bpd from May [S17]. Reuters’ parallel survey put the same month at 19.43 million bpd, up 3.3 million, and states explicitly that the figures exclude the UAE [S16]. Neither number belongs on the same axis as 20.79 million.

And the alliance-wide June figure carries a mislabel. Semafor reported 36.28 million bpd for June, “approximately 3 million barrels more than May” [S18], and described it as OPEC member output. It is not: it ties to the OPEC+ May figure of 33.13 million [S13], not to any OPEC-only series, which sat near 19 million that month. The number is right. The label is wrong.

The single defensible summary is this: OPEC+ output fell from 42.77 million bpd in February 2026 to a trough of 33.13 million bpd in May, and recovered to 36.28 million bpd in June — roughly 7 million bpd below the pre-war level. Within that, OPEC members alone fell to 20.79 million bpd in March, the worst monthly supply shock on record, exceeding the 6.28 million bpd drop of May 2020 [S10].

When Is the Next OPEC+ Meeting?

2 August 2026. As of 31 July 2026, it has not taken place, and no September decision exists.

The seven confirmed the date in the 5 July release and restated their commitment to monthly meetings “to review market conditions, conformity, and compensation” [S1]. Every meeting since March 2026 has been held virtually on the first Sunday of the month, with the decision published the same day, which makes the outcome predictable in timing if not in size.

What the 2 August meeting has to price that the 5 July meeting did not: the Bab al-Mandeb disruption and the 25 July strike on Yanbu, both of which post-date the August decision and the August OSP. The five monthly steps so far have moved in lockstep at 188,000 bpd since the UAE’s departure. A sixth identical step would take the cumulative war-era addition to 1.164 million bpd and leave roughly 191,000 bpd of the April 2023 tranche outstanding. A pause would be the first genuine signal since March that the group’s confidence in the recovery has broken.

Risks, Contradictions and Open Questions

The residual arithmetic does not close. Reuters’ 379,000 bpd figure for the outstanding April 2023 tranche after August, combined with a 188,000 bpd monthly step, does not deliver a full unwind by end-September [S8]. OPEC publishes required-production tables but no running balance of the tranche, and the totals implied by the monthly steps do not reconcile exactly with the reported residual. This is unresolved and we cannot resolve it from primary documents.

Saudi actual output is contested at the margin. The IEA revised its May Saudi estimate between report vintages, and the OPEC Secretariat’s own figures rest partly on direct communication from member states rather than independent measurement. The June figure of 7.34 million bpd is the best available, not a settled fact [S3].

Whether OPEC intends the ambiguity is unknown. A release that never says “increase” is convenient for a group that wants to signal discipline to price-sensitive members while restoring capacity. There is no evidence the drafting is deliberate, and we do not assert that it is. What is documented is that the language is identical across at least two consecutive releases and that it is being misread systematically [S1][S2][S14][S15].

The quota-versus-actual gap may close faster than anyone models. The gap is a logistics artefact. If Hormuz transits normalise, several million barrels per day of ceiling that currently reads as fictional becomes real capacity within weeks, into a market where OPEC has already cut its demand forecast three times [S18]. That is the asymmetric risk in the current structure and it points down.

Compensation may never be delivered. The end-2026 deadline has already been extended once [S7]. A group whose members are collectively 7.51 million bpd below target has no practical way to demand make-up barrels from anyone, and the debt may simply be written down through further extensions.

What to Watch Next

• 2 August 2026 — the seven set September quotas. Watch for a step other than 188,000 bpd; any deviation is the first change in the pattern since May.
• Early August 2026 — Saudi Aramco’s September official selling prices for Asia, the cleanest read on whether Riyadh is still competing on volume after the late-July escalation.
• Mid-August 2026 — OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report and the IEA’s August Oil Market Report, which will carry July production and the first full month of post-Yanbu data.
• September 2026 — the point at which the April 2023 tranche was expected to be fully unwound. If roughly 191,000 bpd is still outstanding, the schedule has slipped and the group will have to say so.
• The tanker count, continuously — Gulf export volumes, not quota headlines, remain the supply variable that matters. June’s 16.1 million bpd against a 24 million bpd pre-war average is the gap to close [S3].

Related Vision 2030 Context

• Saudi Arabia’s OPEC quota — the allocation architecture, baselines, spare capacity and compliance record
• The UAE’s OPEC exit and Saudi swing-producer leverage — why the group has seven members and a smaller monthly step
• Aramco’s August OSP cut to Asia — the pricing decision taken one day after the quota decision
• OPEC explained — membership, structure and the Declaration of Cooperation
• Saudi OPEC strategy — how Riyadh trades volume against price
• Saudi Arabia upstream production — fields, capacity and the spare-capacity claim
• Saudi Arabia oil production — the output baseline before the war
• Saudi Arabia oil exports — routes, buyers and volumes
• Oil price impact on the Saudi economy — the fiscal transmission channel
• Aramco’s war quarter — what the disruption did to the company’s numbers
• The Hormuz bypass — Red Sea logistics and the East-West Pipeline
• The Iran war and the Saudi economy — the macro shock behind these figures
• The oil dependency paradox — why diversification is hardest when oil is most valuable
• Saudi-Russia energy relations — the axis steering OPEC+ after the UAE’s exit
• Oil weapon diplomacy — production policy as statecraft
• Energy transition geopolitics — the case for monetising reserves early
• GCC oil and gas benchmark — regional production, reserves and revenue
• Saudi Arabia’s budget — where oil revenue lands
• Vision 2030 — the programme this revenue funds

Sources

• [S1] OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman Adjust Production and Reaffirm Commitment to Market Stability, press release, 5 July 2026. https://www.opec.org/pr-detail/1835609-5-july-2026.html
• [S2] OPEC, Press Release, 3 May 2026. https://www.opec.org/pr-detail/602-3-may-2026.html
• [S3] International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report — July 2026, monthly report, 10 July 2026. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-july-2026
• [S4] International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report — June 2026, monthly report, 17 June 2026. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-june-2026
• [S5] World Oil, OPEC+ to Raise Oil Production by 188,000 bpd in August, news report, 5 July 2026. https://www.worldoil.com/news/2026/7/5/opec-to-raise-oil-production-by-188-000-bpd-in-august/
• [S6] Rigzone, OPEC Decides to Boost Production Further in August, news report, 6 July 2026. https://www.rigzone.com/news/opec_decides_to_boost_production_further_in_august-06-jul-2026-184064-article/
• [S7] Interfax, OPEC+ Oil Production Quota to Increase by 188,000 bpd in July, Compensation Period for Countries Violating OPEC+ Deal Extended Until End-2026, news report, June 2026. https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/117963/
• [S8] Reuters, OPEC+ Approves Further Oil Output Increase as Hormuz Exports Start to Recover, news report, 5 July 2026; read via Gulf Times, Reuters having blocked automated retrieval. https://www.gulf-times.com/article/728684/business/opec-approves-further-oil-output-increase-as-hormuz-exports-start-to-recover/amp
• [S9] The National, Opec+ Agrees Fourth Monthly Output Rise Despite Hormuz Closure and Price Swings, news report, 7 June 2026. https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/energy/2026/06/07/opec-agrees-fourth-monthly-output-rise-despite-hormuz-closure-and-price-swings/
• [S10] The National, Opec’s Output Falls by Nearly 8 Million bpd in March in the Worst Supply Shock in Decades, news report, 13 April 2026. https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/energy/2026/04/13/opecs-output-falls-by-nearly-8-million-bpd-in-march-in-the-worst-supply-shock-in-decades/
• [S11] Al Jazeera, OPEC+ Announces Symbolic Oil Output Rise During Strait of Hormuz Closure, news report, 3 May 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/3/opec-announces-symbolic-oil-output-rise-during-strait-of-hormuz-closure
• [S12] Al Jazeera, OPEC Agrees to Hike Oil Output, Warns of Slow Recovery After Attacks, news report, 5 April 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/5/opec-agrees-to-hike-oil-output-warns-of-slow-recovery-after-attacks
• [S13] Al Jazeera, OPEC+ Countries Say They Will Expand Monthly Oil Production, news report, 6 July 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/7/6/opec-countries-say-they-will-expand-monthly-oil-production
• [S14] IndexBox, Seven OPEC Plus Nations Agree to 188,000 bpd Oil Production Adjustment for August 2026, aggregated news item, 5 July 2026. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/seven-opec-plus-nations-agree-to-188000-bpd-oil-production-adjustment-for-august-2026/
• [S15] IndexBox, OPEC+ Countries Agree on 188,000 bpd Production Adjustment for July 2026, aggregated news item, 7 June 2026. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/opec-countries-agree-on-188000-bpd-production-adjustment-for-july-2026/
• [S16] Reuters, OPEC Oil Output Rises 3.3 Million bpd in June, Reuters Survey Finds, survey, July 2026; read via Egypt Oil & Gas, Reuters having blocked automated retrieval. https://egyptoil-gas.com/news/opec-oil-output-increased-significantly-in-june-according-to-a-reuters-survey/
• [S17] Grant Smith, Bloomberg, OPEC Output Surged in June as Hormuz Flows Jumped, Survey Shows, survey, 3 July 2026; Bloomberg blocked automated retrieval and the figures were taken from indexed summaries of the piece. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-03/opec-output-surged-in-june-as-hormuz-flows-jumped-survey-shows
• [S18] Semafor, OPEC Trims Oil Demand Forecast, news report, 14 July 2026. https://www.semafor.com/article/07/14/2026/opec-trims-oil-demand-forecast
• [S19] Gulf News, OPEC+ August Output Hike — What the 188,000 bpd Increase Means for Oil Prices, Gulf Exports and the UAE, analysis, July 2026. https://gulfnews.com/business/energy/oil-prices-and-opec-what-the-august-production-increase-really-means-1.500597628
• [S20] Reuters, Saudi Arabia Cuts August Arab Light Asia OSP, Biggest Drop in Over Two Decades, news report, 6 July 2026; read via BOE Report. https://boereport.com/2026/07/06/saudi-arabia-cuts-august-arab-light-asia-osp-biggest-drop-in-over-two-decades/
• [S21] Xinhua, OPEC+ to Raise Oil Production Cap by 188,000 bpd in August, news report, 5 July 2026. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/asiapacific/20260705/0a0de650f1cb4746b66fff547fcdd22c/c.html