Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry said on Friday the kingdom had been fully compliant with its voluntary OPEC+ output target, adding that Saudi marketed crude supply in June was 9.352 million barrels per day, in line with the agreed quota.
The statement follows a report this month by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which said that Saudi Arabia exceeded its oil output target for June by 430,000 barrels to reach 9.8 million barrels, compared to the kingdom’s implied OPEC+ target of 9.37 million bpd.
OPEC+ decided to stop using IEA data in 2022, in a decision driven by Saudi Arabia.
“While production briefly exceeded supply, the additional volumes were not marketed domestically or internationally but redirected as a contingency measure”, the Saudi energy ministry said in its statement.
The ministry explained in the statement that the brief excess in production would be redirected as a contingency measure to build domestic inventories, optimize east-west flows and reposition barrels to offshore storage hubs under long-term delivery strategies.
“The Kingdom reports both production and supply data with full transparency to the OPEC secretariat on a monthly basis,” the energy ministry statement said.
“Furthermore, all eight OPEC-designated secondary sources were formally briefed at the beginning of this week regarding the June figures.”
OPEC+ agreed on Saturday to increase oil production by 548,000 barrels per day in August, surpassing the 411,000-barrel-per-day hikes implemented over the previous three months.
The group, which pumps about half of the world’s oil, has been curtailing production since 2022 to support the market. But it has reversed course this year to regain market share and as U.S. President Donald Trump demanded the group pump more to help keep gasoline prices lower.
The production boost will come from eight members of the group – Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Kazakhstan and Algeria.
The eight started to unwind their most recent layer of cuts of 2.2 million bpd in April.
(Reporting by Yomna Ehab and Hatem Maher; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Aidan Lewis)