Who cheats, who complies, who underproduces
Each square below represents one month. Red = overproduction above quota (darker = more excess). Teal = underproduction. Grey = broadly on quota. Hover for monthly detail.
Quota cheating is never random — it reveals the politics
Every month of OPEC+ overproduction is a political act, not an administrative failure. Countries overproduce because they need the revenue, because they have infrastructure they want to utilise before it deteriorates, or because they calculate the political cost of cheating is lower than the fiscal cost of compliance.
Iraq's overproduction pattern is a fiscal distress signal. Baghdad's budget requires oil at roughly $70/bbl to break even — and requires production at maximum sustainable levels to generate enough revenue to pay government salaries, subsidies, and debt service. When Argus assessed Iraq producing 130K bbl/d above quota throughout 2024, that was not bureaucratic incompetence. It was Baghdad telling OPEC+ that it cannot afford to comply. The force majeure of March 2026 — the production collapse from 4.16M to 1.4M bbl/d — is, paradoxically, the most complete compliance Iraq has ever achieved. It just required Hormuz to close to make it happen.
Kazakhstan's overproduction is an infrastructure story. The Tengizchevroil expansion — a joint venture between Chevron, ExxonMobil, KazMunayGas, and LukArco — added significant production capacity that the Kazakh government does not control directly. When the expansion came online, Kazakhstan's output rose above its OPEC+ quota because the IOC-operated field's production ramp-up was not synchronised with the quota agreement. Nazarbayev's successors have less leverage over the IOC-operated Tengiz field than OPEC+ members expect them to exercise.
Russia's soft overproduction is different again — it is partly a measurement issue. Russia exports both crude and crude products, and the way these are counted in production estimates creates inherent uncertainty. Russian output numbers in any given month represent estimates, not confirmed figures. OPEC+ accepts this ambiguity because forcing the issue with Moscow is politically untenable for Riyadh.
The most important compliance dynamic in 2025 was not the cheating itself — it was Saudi Arabia's response. Riyadh accelerated the unwind of voluntary cuts four times faster than the original plan, moving to bring back 2.2M bbl/d in five months rather than eighteen. This was explicitly framed as punishment: countries that had overproduced were told they would lose the benefit of Saudi restraint if they continued to do so. The message was clear enough that Iraq briefly complied in April and May 2025 for the first time in over a year.
The chronic overproducers — why each one cheats
Fiscal need is the driver. Baghdad's budget requires maximum production at all times — the government cannot afford to comply. Overproduced every month Jan 2024–Mar 2025 before briefly meeting quota under extreme pressure. 16 consecutive months of overproduction drove Saudi Arabia to accelerate the production increase unwind as punishment.
Force majeure since March 17, 2026. The question is now moot — Iraq's output is at one-third of pre-crisis levels, all directed to domestic refining.
Infrastructure-driven overproduction. The Tengizchevroil expansion (Chevron, ExxonMobil, KazMunayGas) brought significant new capacity online that the Kazakh government cannot easily throttle without damaging IOC relationships. Astana promises to compensate with future cuts but delivery is consistently poor.
Set the all-time record for single-month overproduction in July 2025 at 441K bbl/d above quota — the highest since the end of the COVID-era output cuts in 2020.
Russia's overproduction is partly a measurement problem. Output estimates for Russian crude vary by 100–200K bbl/d depending on the methodology, and the Kremlin's incentive to publish accurate numbers is limited. Soft overproduction is tolerated by Riyadh because challenging Moscow directly would fracture the OPEC+ coalition.
Sanctions rerouting via India and China has complicated tracking. Russia's effective production is assessed through tanker flows rather than official statements.
The UAE's compliance picture is complicated by a 300K bbl/d capacity-related baseline uplift agreed in 2024, which raised its effective quota. Abu Dhabi has been pushing for higher production allowances for years, citing significant capacity investment at ADNOC. Some of what appears as overproduction is contested as legitimate against the raised baseline.
ADNOC is targeting 5M bbl/d capacity by 2025 — a level that fundamentally cannot be accommodated within any realistic OPEC+ quota allocation, creating an inherent long-term tension.
No sanctions mechanism — why the cartel has no teeth
OPEC has no formal mechanism for sanctioning countries that chronically overproduce. This is not an oversight — it is a structural feature of a voluntary agreement between sovereign states. The only enforcement tool available to Saudi Arabia, which acts as the de facto enforcer, is the threat to flood the market with its own production, collapsing prices and making everyone's overproduction worthless. Saudi Arabia used this nuclear option briefly in 2020 against Russia; the resulting price collapse lasted weeks before a deal was struck.
The acceleration of the voluntary cut unwind in 2025 — moving four times faster than originally planned — was the next level down from this nuclear option. Riyadh essentially told overproducers: if you insist on flooding the market, we will too, and we can sustain lower prices longer than you can. It worked briefly. Iraq complied in April and May. Kazakhstan promised compensation plans. The effect faded by summer.
The deeper problem is that OPEC+'s cohesion depends on all major members having aligned incentives around price stability. Those incentives are diverging. Countries with large reserves and long time horizons (Saudi Arabia, UAE) want prices stable at a level that maximises long-term revenue. Countries with fiscal crises and high production costs (Iraq, Venezuela) need to maximise current output. Countries with IOC-operated fields (Kazakhstan) cannot throttle production without damaging investor relationships. The coalition is under structural stress that monthly compliance numbers understate.