Riyadh:

OPEC+ agreed on Sunday to raise oil production for June by 188,000 barrels per day, a decision taken by seven of the group's participating countries. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Until it reopens, none of those extra barrels reaches a buyer.

That is the awkwardness at the centre of the announcement. The closure, a consequence of the US-Israel war on Iran, sits across the route that carries the bulk of Gulf crude to refiners in Asia and Europe. Saudi Arabia can lift more oil out of the ground. What it cannot do is move what it already has.

Prices show the strain. Brent was trading near $105 a barrel in mid-May and the US benchmark WTI close to $100, against WTI levels below $60 when the year opened. Axios reported in April that a prolonged closure could carry crude towards $200 a barrel, a number that would have read as fantasy in January.

The June increase also reverses a position the group held only months ago. At its November 30 meeting OPEC+ blocked production growth for the first quarter of 2026 and reaffirmed that output would not rise. It then approved 206,000 bpd for April, citing a steady global economic outlook and low inventories, and followed in March with a Saudi-led agreement to add a further 411,000 bpd from May.

Those steps belong to a larger schedule. The group is working to restore roughly 2.2 million barrels per day of previously curtailed output by the end of 2026, and it has been accelerating that timetable as Saudi Arabia shifts towards defending market share rather than price.

The shift was already being felt before Hormuz closed. Unwinding the cuts had pushed Brent down into the $70 to $80 band. Saudi Aramco then set the official selling price for its flagship Arab Light grade to Asia in August at $1.50 a barrel below the Oman/Dubai average, which Reuters reported as the steepest monthly cut since its records began in 2003.

For Gulf exporters the arithmetic is uncomfortable. Headline prices are high. Volumes through the strait are not, and revenue depends on cargoes that actually clear.

Reopening will not settle it overnight either. Traders quoted in market reports expect shipping to need weeks, and possibly months, to find its normal rhythm again once the route is open, as tanker schedules, insurance cover and refinery run rates are rebuilt along the chain.