By Summer Said in Cairo and Benoit Faucon in London
OPEC and its allies agreed to boost oil production on Thursday, endorsing a plan they announced earlier this month that has done little to alleviate concerns over supply ahead of President Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia in July.
In their fifth meeting since Russia invaded Ukraine, sending oil prices above $100 a barrel for the first time in eight years, the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a coalition of Moscow-led oil producers agreed to raise their collective production by 648,000 barrels a day, delegates said.
The increase in production levels for August matches what the broader alliance, called OPEC+, also agreed for July.
Before this, OPEC+ in recent months rolled out a small increase of 432,000 barrels a day in oil production that the alliance agreed to last year as part of a plan to raise output to prepandemic levels. It had rebuffed repeated calls from the U.S. and other major oil-consuming nations to pump more oil to help tame high prices.
Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-30-22 0854ET
