Abu Dhabi hosts oil summit as OPEC+ halts planned production hikes

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Abu Dhabi hosted a major oil summit Monday, hours after the OPEC+ cartel and its allies said it would halt further production increases planned in the first quarter of 2026 over concerns of too much supply in the market.

The OPEC+ decision comes as both the United States and the United Kingdom implemented new oil sanctions targeting Russia over its war on Ukraine. Those sanctions targets included Rosneft and the Russian oil company Lukoil, whose red-and-white logo hung over the annual Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference in the Emirati capital as a major sponsor of the event.

The UAE has maintained close ties to Russia despite the war, but has served as a key interlocutor between Kyiv and Moscow to negotiate prisoner exchanges.

On Sunday, OPEC+ met and decided to increase its production by an additional 137,000 barrels of oil beginning in December. However, it said other adjustments planned in January, February and March of next year would be paused “due to seasonality.”

OPEC+ includes the core members of the cartel, as well as nations outside of the group led by Russia.

Benchmark Brent crude sold Monday around $65 a barrel, down from a post-COVID high of some $115 a barrel after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It had fallen to $60 a barrel in recent days over concerns that the market had too much production.

“Yes, OPEC+ is blinking, but it’s a calculated move,” said Jorge León, the head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy. “Sanctions on Russian producers have injected a new layer of uncertainty into supply forecasts, and the group knows that overproducing now could backfire later. By pausing, OPEC+ is protecting prices, projecting unity, and buying time to see how sanctions play out on Russian barrels.”

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration continues to push for more production in America. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a former Republican governor of North Dakota, was on hand for the Abu Dhabi oil summit on Monday. Burgum chairs Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S., a key economic and political indicator in the country, stood at $3.03 on Monday.

The oil conference, known by the acronym ADIPEC, comes after the UAE hosted the United Nations COP28 climate talks in 2023. Those talks ended with a call by nearly 200 countries to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels — the first time the conference made that crucial pledge.

But the UAE as a whole still plans to increase its production capacity of oil to 5 million barrels a day in the coming years as it pursues more clean energy at home.