Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Opec will stop using the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) to independently monitor its members’ production levels, the oil cartel said on Monday.
The producer body said it had dropped the EIA and Rystad, an energy consultancy, from its group of monitors and replaced them with data companies Kpler, OilX and ESAI, without giving a reason for the changes.
Five other companies assessing Opec’s output are likely to remain the same, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The eight-strong group of monitors is responsible for verifying the production levels of Opec members, a key role when it comes to checking whether countries are sticking to their agreed quotas.
“Opec probably now sees the EIA as a [direct] US government agency,” said one former Opec staffer. “Its numbers were not particularly different from the other monitors, perhaps a little bit higher on the UAE’s production,” they added. The EIA is owned by the US Department of Energy but is run as a separate, arms-length body.
“No one really believes the monthly Opec outlook [production numbers] at this point, though,” the former staffer added.
The move comes despite warming ties between the US and Saudi Arabia, the dominant force in Opec, but the cartel has previously had a rocky relationship with US President Donald Trump.
The new president has already called for the cartel to increase oil production to help bring down prices, but the group said on Monday that it would continue to hold output at current levels.
During Trump’s first administration, he also demanded that Opec raise production to offset the loss of Iranian oil that was held back from the market due to tough US sanctions.
The former Opec staffer said it was unclear why Rystad had been dropped by the cartel, noting that the company had always reported numbers from Opec members that were in line with consensus and had good relations with Saudi Aramco and Adnoc, two of the largest national oil companies in the producer group.
The last time Opec reshuffled its independent monitors was in 2022, when it removed the International Energy Agency (IEA) from the group. Relations between the IEA and Opec had deteriorated significantly over their divergent views on the energy transition.
The EIA declined to comment. Opec did not comment on the reason for the change.
“Rystad Energy values our long-standing commercial relationship with Opec and understands that for this specific aspect of our engagement it is common to engage different market intelligence providers,” said a spokesperson for Rystad Energy.
