OPEC said Saudi Arabia led declines in the group’s oil output last month, weeks before its 12 members meet to decide whether to trim a global supply glut that drove crude prices into a bear market.

Saudi Arabia’s production fell 69,900 bbl/d to a seven-month low of 9.603 million, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said in a monthly report. The data are based on estimates from sources including analysts and media organizations. OPEC’s members pumped 30.253 MMbbl/d, a decrease of 226,400 barrels, the largest since March. There are signs of global economic recovery, it said.

Brent crude futures, used to price more than half the world’s oil, traded near a four-year low Nov. 12 on speculation that OPEC’s biggest members will refrain from paring output to drain a global surplus. Manufacturing indicators from the U.S., Japan, China and Germany show that the economic recovery is progressing, according to the organization.

“The improvement in manufacturing activities is positively impacting oil consumption,” OPEC’s Vienna-based research department said in its monthly oil market report. “Any additional improvement in the economies of major oil-consuming countries should help the demand trend to pick up further.”

Saudi submission

Saudi Arabia’s own submission showed a decrease of 13,700 barrels daily to 9.69 MMbbl. The group didn’t publish an estimate for its total output in October based on countries’ own submissions because Venezuela didn’t provide one.

The organization’s forecasts for global demand, and the amount of crude it will need to supply this year and next, were unchanged from its last monthly report. World oil consumption will increase by 1.19 MMbbl/d in 2015 to 92.38 million a day, it said.

OPEC’s production in October, while in line with the average amount the group considers needed in the fourth quarter, is about 1.8 MMbbl/d higher than the 28.4 million it expects will be required in the first quarter of next year. The world will need an average 29.2 MMbbl/d from the group in 2015, it said.

Libya restart

Libya alone among OPEC members increased output in October, boosting production by 59,100 barrels a day to 842,000 a day. Testing is under way at Sharara, the country’s biggest oilfield, in order to resume production after an attack by gunmen last week, National Oil Corp. spokesman Mohamed Elharari said by phone from Tripoli.

OPEC won’t cut its collective crude output at its Nov. 27 conference in Vienna, and global oil prices will stabilize once the surplus is absorbed by the market, Kuwait Oil Minister Ali Al-Omair said in Abu Dhabi Nov. 10.

Total oil inventories in the most-developed nations are 8.1 MMbbl below their five-year average, at 2.7 Bbbl, while crude stockpiles in these nations are 18 MMbbl above the five-year mean, according to the report.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based adviser to consuming nations on energy policy, will release its monthly market report on Nov. 14. In a longer-term outlook published, the agency said that “the short-term picture of a well-supplied oil market should not disguise the challenges that lie ahead” to meet growing demand.