Some of the members of the OPEC cartel and non-OPEC countries who participated in last year’s production deal will hold a meeting this Sunday in Kuwait and this can be seen as a semi-final meeting before the final May meeting in Vienna, which would be attended by all OPEC members in the OPEC headquarter. This is a monitoring committee meeting and participating countries are five; Kuwait, Algeria, Venezuela, Russia, and Oman. Representatives from these five countries would assess the current production deal to review the compliance with the deal and also the path forward.

The recent commentaries from within the OPEC suggests that some members agree that the production deal needs to be extended in order to have greater impacts on price while others are worried that a declining market share in key regions amid a lower oil price would stir up further economic troubles in the future. Saudi Arabia, the lead producer of the OPEC is worried that the deal is helping the US shale oil to recover grounds and that is not in the interest of the kingdom.

In addition to that increased production in Iran in February and Iraq’s pledge to increase production to 5 million barrels are adding to the worries. We at FxWirePro expect that the production deal would be extended by another six months and the OPEC would demand greater participation from other non-OPEC producers like Russia.