Brazil to join OPEC+ group of oil producers, strengthening cartel's influence

Brazil will join the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies in the broader OPEC+ group. The Brazilian government’s National Council for Energy Policy approved the move on Tuesday. The step will strengthen the influence of this alliance of non-Western countries over global oil prices, the AP reported.

The South American country is becoming a major oil producer nine months before it hosts the UN climate summit COP30. Brazil received an invitation to join the world’s biggest oil producers in 2023.

The OPEC+ group includes the 12 members of OPEC, which was founded 65 years ago to coordinate oil production with the aim of stabilising markets. In addition to OPEC members, it includes ten other major oil producers, the largest of which is Russia.

For now, Brazil will join the so-called OPEC+ Charter of Cooperation. It will therefore not yet have to adjust its oil production to levels agreed by the organisation’s members, which in practice often means cutting output.

Even so, the decision by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will significantly strengthen the OPEC-Russia alliance, the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported. This century, Brazil has begun exploiting vast oil fields in the Atlantic with the help of the United States, and is now the world’s seventh-largest oil producer.

Lula da Silva has presented himself as an environmental champion. He has worked to curb deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and protect the rights of Indigenous people. But he has also proposed that new revenue from oil sales could fund the transition to green energy. In recent weeks, he has pressed the national environmental protection agency to approve exploratory drilling near the mouth of the Amazon, one of the world’s most biodiverse regions.