Red Hat Bugzilla – 1844156 – The base image "quay.io/openshift/origin-operator-registry:4.4" and the inferred base image from the current cluster both don't work
For openshift < 4.5, the docs indicate that a base image should be specified for the targeted version of openshift. There have been improvements to oc adm catalog for 4.5+ that make the experience better, but it is a lot to consider backporting.
It should be fine to use the 4.5 oc to build a catalog for a 4.4 cluster. If that approach doesn't work, or if I have misread the report for this bug, please re-open with additional information.