LONDON, (Reuters) – OPEC and its ally will make a decision on Thursday about whether they want to increase or decrease oil supply. This follows big gyrations of crude oil prices and a U.S. withdrawal from oil reserves. There are also concerns over Omicron coronavirus.

Brent oil prices dropped to about $70/barrel, lower than October’s record-breaking $86. The Omicron variant, which raised concerns about an oversupply of oil, caused the prices to drop by their largest monthly fall since the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The Benchmark stock price was below $70 Thursday.

The OPEC++ group of producers that includes the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, (OPEC), has been in conflict with U.S. calls for an increase in oil output to help the global economy. According to producers, they don’t wish to slow down the recovery of the fragile energy industry by adding to a new supply glut.

Russia and Saudi Arabia were the largest OPEC+ producer countries. They said before this week’s meeting that they didn’t need to react in a hurry to change policy. Iraq indicated that OPEC+ expected to expand existing output policies in the near term.

The group has added an extra 400,000 barrels per daily (bpd), to the global supply since August. Slowly, it is reducing the record-breaking cuts made in 2020 after the pandemic caused a crash of demand.

Experts from OPEC+ stated Wednesday in a report viewed by Reuters, that Omicron’s impact was still unclear, despite the fact that many countries had imposed lockdowns and other restrictions.

OPEC+ was already weighing the impact of the announcement last week by the United States, and other large consumers, to withdraw emergency crude oil reserves in order to reduce energy prices.

OPEC+ predicted a 3M bpd surplus for the quarter 2022 following the release of reserve funds, an increase of 2.3 million bpd.

Graphic: Oil market balances in 2022 https://graphics.reuters.com/OIL-OPEC/znvnexeeopl/chart.png

The report stated that there would not be any significant impact on the released information as some countries chose to release it. It also said that its duration and effectiveness were uncertain.

According to U.S. Deputy Energie Secretary David Turk, the administration of Joe Biden could alter the date for the release if the prices fall significantly.

OPEC+ reduced last year’s output record of 10,000,000 bpd. This is equivalent to roughly 10% of global supply. The cuts total 3.8 million bpd.

However, OPEC’s November oil production fell short of its planned levels, and some OPEC producers have struggled to boost their production.