In November last year, OPEC producers agreed to a historic deal to cut production supplies by 1.2 million barrels per day, first such move since the Great Recession of 2008/09. In addition to that, 11 non-OPEC producers including Russia agreed to cut production by another 558,000 barrels per day. Russia shared the biggest burden among non-OPEC producers by promising to cut production by 300,000 barrels per day.

While OPEC compliance remained well above 90 percent in January and soon reached full compliance, the compliance has remained weak from non-OPEC producers including Russia. By the end of March, Russia’s compliance averaged 77 percent, while the overall non-OPEC compliance was at 51 percent. According to a report by Sputnik, Russia’s compliance with the deal reached 100 percent at the end of April. However, International Energy Agency reported 66 percent compliance by non-OPEC producers at the end of April. At the end of April, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Moscow had effectively reached its 300,000-bpd production cut target under its agreement with OPEC.

While the oil ministers of Saudi Arabia and Russia are in agreement to extend the current deal by another 9 months until March 2018, the low level of compliance by non-OPEC producers could be a contentious issue for other OPEC members when they meet on May 25th at OPEC’s Vienna headquarters.