OPEC's monitoring committee has repeated its April wording on maritime routes and attacks on energy infrastructure word for word, and the sentence commending alternative export routes is not in it
The wording has not changed since April.
The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee held its 67th meeting by videoconference on 2 August, and three of its paragraphs are identical, word for word, to ones it published on 5 April. The committee "highlighted the critical importance of safeguarding international maritime routes to ensure the uninterrupted flow of energy". It "expressed concern regarding attacks on energy infrastructure, noting that restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time". It stressed that actions undermining energy supply security "increase market volatility".
The four months in between were not quiet ones for the routes in question. This publication has reported attacks logged in the Strait of Hormuz as recently as the night of 31 July, and an Iraq to Turkey agreement putting a floor of 750,000 barrels a day under a pipeline to the Mediterranean. The committee's description of the problem is the one it wrote in the spring.
One sentence did come out. In April the committee "commended the DoC countries that took the initiative to ensure the continued availability of supplies, particularly through the use of alternative export routes, which have contributed to reducing market volatility". That sentence is not in the August statement, and the August statement does not say why.
Whether it survived the meeting in between cannot be established from this source. The April statement scheduled the 66th meeting for 7 June, and no 66th statement appears on OPEC's press releases page, which lists the 64th, the 65th and the 67th with nothing between the last two. What OPEC published on 7 June was the 41st ministerial meeting statement and the monthly production release. So the most recent committee text available for comparison is four months old, and the gap is a gap in the record rather than proof that nothing was said.
Two other things are now on it. The committee reviewed crude production data for May and June 2026 and "noted the overall conformity" of the countries in the Declaration of Cooperation, publishing no figure for either month. And the membership list is shorter: April named Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Algeria and Venezuela, and August names that list without the United Arab Emirates.
The next meeting is 4 October.
