08:43 AM EDT, 09/08/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Oil prices rose early on Monday, a day after OPEC+ announced a smaller than expected production hike for October. West Texas Intermediate crude oil for October delivery was last seen up US$1.31 to US$63.18 per barrel, while November Brent oil was up US$1.41 to US$66.91.

At its Sunday ministerial meeting, OPEC+ agreed to raise October production by 137,000-barrels per day, lighter than many expected and easing back from the 548,000 bpd of new output it added on Sept.1 as it wrapped up the return of 2.2-million bpd of voluntary production cuts. Though the production increase is likely to add to an already over-supplied market, the hike is likely to be smaller than the cartel's headline as some members are restraining output to compensate for prior overproduction.

"Due to overproduction across this subgroup of producers, the actual incremental increase to follow from today's announcement will be substantially smaller than the headline number, with Saudi Arabia having the vast share of

the remaining spare capacity, alongside materially smaller volumes in the UAE and Kuwait. The rest of the group, including Russia, has very little ability to ramp up output in the near term. We see this very modest October addition, likely less than 70 kb/d," Helima Croft, Head of Global Commodity Strategy and MENA Research at PBC Capital Markets, noted.

Still, the market is already coping with the cartel's production hikes as the U.S. economy slows amid capricious tariff policies, cutting into demand. The U.S. job market is slowing, with last week's August jobs report coming in well under expectations, while inflation continues to run above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, though traders continue to add risk assets on expectations a rate cut will come next week, when the Fed's Federal Open Market Committee ends its two-day meeting on Sept. 17.

"Given the expected poor showing in the US Non-Farm Payrolls, pricing once again increases for a FED rate cut, and even some overly-bullish calls that there might be a double fifty-point shave in September. Cooler heads believe three cuts in total will be seen before the year is out, but either way, it enables the stock market bulls to take up a default buy program," PVM Oil Associates wrote.