Opec: No decision on output level: Update 2OREANDA-NEWS. December 07, 2015. Opec ministers made no recommendation on output at their meeting today.

"If you want to put a number on it, it is the current production number," Opec president Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, Nigeria's minister, said at a press conference after the meeting. Argus calculates November production at 31.8mn b/d, equivalent to 32.5mn b/d including Indonesia, which has reactivated its Opec membership.

"The volumes we are talking about are current actual, not the 30mn b/d," Ibe Kachikwu said. Opec's output ceiling until today's meeting was 30mn b/d.

Opec secretary-general Abdullah al-Badri said that the group "cannot put a number now" on an agreed production level as "Iran is coming — we do not know when Iran will come — we have to accommodate Iran one way or another."

"We will maintain production at current levels," al-Badri said. But "production changes from time to time" so Opec decided to postpone a decision on the agreed level until the next Opec meeting.

Opec has scheduled its next meeting for 2 June, in Vienna. By the time of the next Opec meeting "the picture will be clearer for us to decide on a number", al-Badri said.

"Current production is what we are saying we are going to keep at this time. As we go on, the picture will be more clear. Maybe in the first half of next year," al-Badri said.

The statement issued at the conclusion of the meeting simply said that the organisation will continue to monitor markets. It added that global GDP growth for 2016 is projected at 3.4pc with oil demand growth of 1.3mn b/d.

Non-Opec output is forecast to contract, it said, without saying by how much. "We discussed non-Opec supply. The picture is not clear at this time. We are going to meet in June and look at the situation one more time," al-Badri said.

"We discussed everything. We agreed nothing is clear, and we will meet again in June," he said.

Leaving the Opec conference earlier, Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said ministers made "no decision" on output levels.

The move to have no agreed output level suits Saudi Arabia's strategy of producing more low-cost oil in the hope that inefficient producers outside Opec will shut down fields.

Saudi Arabia no longer refers to this as a market-share policy, although this is what is has been dubbed by observers. At the start of today's Opec meeting, Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi said: "Everyone is welcome to go into the market."