BloombergOPEC stood on the verge of a deal to reduce its official output target in line with recent production, but after six hours of fraught talks in Vienna on Thursday, ministers left the cartel’s headquarters before a final agreement was nailed down. Earlier in the day, ministers reached a deal in principle to deepen their output-cuts target by 500,000 barrels a day, delegates said. Even so, the cartel could not finalize the details of how to divide the adjustment between members before further discussions with partners from the wider OPEC+ group yesterday, delegates said. The new output target for Iraq, which has the worst record of implementing the existing cuts of any major oil producer in OPEC, was a particular sticking point, delegates said. OPEC+ last year agreed to reduce volumes by about 1.2 million barrels a day to eliminate a surplus and bolster crude prices.
