The world's biggest oil producers, OPEC+ have defied global pressure to significantly increase their output. This led to oil prices sliding by 4% to near 6-month lows. Despite president Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia last month, the group of nations only agreed to increase output by 100,000 barrels per day in September. It’s one of the smallest increases in its history, equivalent to around a minute-and-a-half of daily demand.

The increase offers little respite for consumers suffering from the inflationary squeeze of high oil prices. OPEC+ had shown some goodwill toward consumers in recent months, fast-tracking the production increases in July and August that completed the reversal of their Covid-era curbs. Saudi ramped up output to 10.78 million barrels a day last month, according to a Bloomberg survey, a level pumped only on rare occasions.