Tracking OPEC+ production is one of the most contested data exercises in commodity markets. The OPEC+ alliance currently sets monthly production targets for 22 member and partner countries, with formal commitments to specific output levels intended to manage global oil supply. Whether members actually comply with these commitments is the single most important question in OPEC+ market analysis — and answering it requires combining multiple data sources, each with their own methodological quirks and limitations.
This page covers the principal sources of OPEC+ production data, the secondary sources methodology that OPEC itself uses, the relationship between baselines and quotas, and how market participants synthesize the available data into useful production trackers.
Why Tracking Is Difficult
Several structural features make OPEC+ production tracking inherently challenging:
No independent measurement authority. No single independent organization measures actual oil production at the wellhead or terminal in real time across all OPEC+ member countries. Production data is collected through indirect methods.
Producer self-reporting biases. Producers have incentives to over-report production when quota allocations are being negotiated (justifying higher baselines) and to under-report when compliance is being assessed (signaling adherence to quota commitments).
Sanctioned trade complications. Iranian and Venezuelan production, in particular, operates partly through opaque channels that resist direct measurement. Russian production tracking has become similarly complicated since 2022.
Production versus exports distinction. Tracking exports through vessel monitoring is easier than tracking actual production. But exports differ from production by the amount of crude that enters domestic refining or inventory, which is itself difficult to measure precisely.
Definitional inconsistencies. What counts as crude vs condensate vs NGL, what production includes (and excludes), and how to handle field-specific measurement issues all vary across sources.
The Monthly Oil Market Report
OPEC publishes the Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) typically during the second week of each calendar month. The MOMR is one of the most comprehensive single oil market data publications and includes:
- Production data by OPEC member, presented in two forms: "direct communication" (production levels reported by each member) and "secondary sources" (production levels estimated by external industry sources)
- Non-OPEC supply assessments for the principal OPEC+ partner producers including Russia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Azerbaijan, and others
- OECD inventory data at the regional and country level
- Demand forecasts by region and product category
- OPEC's market commentary on supply, demand, and balance dynamics
The "secondary sources" methodology is OPEC's principal mechanism for assessing actual production. Rather than relying solely on member self-reporting, OPEC commissions production estimates from external industry sources — typically including S&P Global, Argus Media, the International Energy Agency, Wood Mackenzie, Rystad Energy, and Bloomberg. The estimates from these sources are averaged to produce the secondary source production figure published in the MOMR.
The secondary source methodology has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it produces independent estimates that resist member self-reporting bias. The disadvantage is that secondary sources themselves use different methodologies and produce estimates that can diverge by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day for individual members.
The IEA Oil Market Report
The International Energy Agency publishes its own Oil Market Report (OMR) on a monthly schedule similar to OPEC's MOMR, typically a few days apart. The IEA OMR is the principal alternative to MOMR data and is widely used by traders, analysts, and policymakers in OECD countries.
IEA production data is produced through the same general approach of synthesizing multiple sources but reflects the IEA's own assessment methodology and data preferences. The IEA estimates often differ from MOMR secondary source estimates by meaningful amounts for individual countries, particularly for those with sanctioned trade flows where measurement is most difficult.
Where MOMR and IEA OMR disagree, the disagreement itself is informative — typically reflecting different assumptions about hard-to-measure flows like Iranian or Russian production. Sophisticated analysts compare the two and form their own views based on the divergence.
JODI
The Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) is a multilateral effort to standardize and publish oil production, consumption, trade, and inventory data. JODI publishes the data submitted by national governments themselves through the JODI database, with monthly updates.
JODI data has the advantage of being directly sourced from national authorities rather than estimated by external observers. The disadvantage is the substantial reporting lag (JODI data lags actual production by several months) and incomplete coverage (not all OPEC+ members report comprehensively to JODI).
For some countries, JODI data is the most authoritative single source. For others (notably the more politically sensitive producers), JODI data is incomplete or reported with substantial delay.
Vessel Tracking and Satellite Monitoring
Modern production tracking increasingly relies on vessel tracking (AIS data) and satellite monitoring. Commercial providers including Kpler, Vortexa, OilX, ClipperData, and others publish daily and weekly export estimates for individual countries based on tanker movement tracking. Satellite monitoring of storage tanks at major terminals provides additional inventory and indirect production signals.
These commercial data sources have transformed production tracking by providing near-real-time export estimates that previously could only be reconstructed months after the fact. They are particularly valuable for tracking sanctioned trade flows that don't appear in conventional data sources.
The principal limitation is that vessel tracking captures exports rather than production. Domestic refining intake must be estimated separately to back into production estimates. For OPEC+ members with substantial domestic refining (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia), this gap can be significant.
Baselines and Quotas
OPEC+ supply discipline operates through a system of baselines and quotas:
Baseline. A reference production level negotiated for each member country, intended to represent normal production capacity. Baselines are typically set as of a specific reference date (e.g., October 2022 production) and remain fixed until renegotiated.
Required production cut. The percentage or absolute reduction below baseline that each member commits to during a defined period.
Quota. The resulting production target — baseline minus required cut — that the member commits to maintain.
Voluntary additional cuts. Some members commit to additional production reductions beyond the framework requirements. These have been particularly significant in the post-2022 period, with Saudi Arabia and several other producers maintaining "voluntary" cuts of 1 million+ barrels per day above the baseline framework requirements.
The baseline negotiation is the most consequential single decision in OPEC+ frameworks. A high baseline gives a member a high quota even with required cuts; a low baseline produces a low quota. Disputes over baseline assignments — most prominently the UAE-Saudi tension and the Angolan departure — have at multiple points threatened OPEC+ cohesion.
Reading Compliance Reports
Each MOMR effectively serves as a compliance report by comparing reported production against assigned quotas. Market participants extract several specific signals:
Headline compliance rate. Aggregate OPEC+ production versus aggregate quota commitments, expressed as a percentage. High compliance signals discipline; low compliance signals stress in the alliance.
Individual member compliance. Country-by-country comparison highlighting overshoots and undershoots. Sustained Iraqi overshoots have been a recurring theme; Kazakh overshoots have been similar; Saudi compliance has been the principal disciplining factor.
Required compensation cuts. Cumulative overshoots can trigger compensation cut requirements that producers theoretically apply in subsequent months. Actual compensation execution has been variable.
Effective production versus theoretical capacity. The gap between current production and stated production capacity indicates the size of the spare capacity buffer available to respond to disruptions.
What the Data Doesn't Capture
Several limitations affect even the best OPEC+ tracking:
Iranian and Venezuelan production under sanctions. These flows operate through opaque channels that no source captures fully.
Russian production in the shadow trade environment. Conventional sources struggle to verify Russian production claims in the post-2022 environment.
Condensate vs crude distinctions. OPEC quotas typically apply to crude only, but condensate production is sometimes included in published production figures. Treatment varies by source.
Field-specific outages. Major outages at specific producing facilities can move production substantially within a month and are often poorly captured in monthly aggregated data.
OPEC+ Production Tracking in One Sentence
OPEC+ production tracking requires synthesizing the monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR), the IEA Oil Market Report (OMR), JODI national submissions, and commercial vessel tracking data — each with its own methodological quirks — to assess actual production levels against the baselines and quotas that frame OPEC+ supply discipline commitments and that drive global oil market expectations.
Continue Reading
- What is the OPEC Reference Basket
- Saudi Arabia oil — the OPEC+ leader
- Russia oil — the non-OPEC OPEC+ anchor
- The Baker Hughes rig count
- Oil market glossary