• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 38 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 2 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 4 hours If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 4 days Oil Stocks, Market Direction, Bitcoin, Minerals, Gold, Silver - Technical Trading <--- Chris Vermeulen & Gareth Soloway weigh in
  • 5 days The European Union is exceptional in its political divide. Examples are apparent in Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belarus, Ireland, etc.
  • 17 hours Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
  • 4 days "What’s In Store For Europe In 2023?" By the CIA (aka RFE/RL as a ruse to deceive readers)
Nick Cunningham

Nick Cunningham

Nick Cunningham is an independent journalist, covering oil and gas, energy and environmental policy, and international politics. He is based in Portland, Oregon. 

More Info

Premium Content

The Most Likely Outcome Of The OPEC Meeting

The OPEC+ meeting is set to kickoff, with a press conference scheduled for Thursday afternoon in Vienna. While there seems to be a vague outline of an agreement in hand, there is still quite a bit of uncertainty about what might come out of the meeting.

Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih injected a bit more uncertainty into the market with his comments in a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg. He said that Russia supports production restraints “in principle,” but that it would be “premature” to say what specifically they might agree to. He even said that OPEC+ still needs to “figure out what needs to be done and by how much.”

While there is always a bit of jawboning and word games ahead of any OPEC meeting, the comments suggest that there is still some disagreement over the specifics. “We need to get together and listen to our colleagues, hear about their views on supply and demand and their projections of their own countries’ production,” al-Falih said. “The next road to cross is whether all countries are willing to come on board and contribute to that cut.”

Saudi Arabia’s inclination is to cut aggressively, but it also does not want to anger U.S. President Donald Trump, who has bailed the Saudis out on the Khashoggi affair. Al-Falih was notably more circumspect regarding a production cut on Tuesday than he was only a few weeks ago, when he announced that Saudi Arabia would unilaterally lower exports beginning in December. Between then and now the U.S. Senate passed a bill ending American support for the Saudi war in Yemen, significantly upping the pressure on Saudi Arabia not to cut by too much. Related: What Crashing Refining Margins Mean For Oil Markets

Meanwhile, Riyadh still needs to convince Moscow to some degree. Even though Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he was on board, Bloomberg reports that Russia only wants to cut output by 150,000 bpd, a rather modest amount, which would mean more heavy lifting by Saudi Arabia to balance the market. Russia appears willing to go along with some sort of reduction, but it also does not feel the same urgency as the Saudis, particularly because of the dynamics of how its currency fluctuates with oil prices, making lower prices much less painful compared to Saudi Arabia.

Even if Saudi Arabia and Russia are not quite on the same page regarding the size of the cut and how to share the reductions, most analysts see some sort of deal emerging from Thursday’s meeting. In fact, even though Russia is not a price hawk in the same way that Saudi Arabia is, Moscow can gain from the damaged relationship between Washington and Riyadh.

“Having stayed largely silent on the Khashoggi case, Moscow has an opportunity to strengthen relations with Riyadh further if it accommodates Saudi Arabia,” Torbjorn Soltvedt, politics principal analyst for Verisk Maplecroft wrote in a note to clients. “An OPEC+ agreement led by Saudi Arabia and Russia that openly defies the US is unlikely; but we believe Riyadh has a good chance of securing the participation of Moscow in a flexible supply cut agreement.” Related: Australians Create Battery From Waste

Soltvedt said that the consultancy’s “basecase scenario is a de-facto Saudi-led cut with Russian participation, but a flexible agreement that shies away from specific targets.” Individual countries may not have specific targets; instead a collective target could be the main takeaway.

Flexibility is important, Verisk Maplecroft argues, because the oil market could undergo another dramatic shift in just a few months’ time. “Another benefit of this approach is that it reduces the likelihood of another OPEC U-turn if the Trump administrations decides to not renew Iran waivers expiring in May,” Soltvedt of Verisk Maplecroft wrote. “With around 1 million bpd of Iranian oil in the balance, a rigid OPEC agreement in the traditional mold risks quickly being overtaken by events in 2019.”

The Trump administration – mainly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton – are eager to tighten the screws on Iran. In October, as the U.S. was in the midst of preparing to issue waivers for eight countries importing oil from Iran, the oil market looked precariously tight. The ensuing price crash – no doubt made worse by the waivers themselves – has revealed a market much looser than expected.

That means that by May, the Trump administration will likely want to let most of those waivers expire. The result could be much more Iranian supply knocked offline. Saudi Arabia and Russia need to account for this possibility at Thursday’s meeting in Vienna. That means, as Verisk Maplecroft argues, a production cut, but one that can be easily rolled back should events require it.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment
  • Mamdouh G Salameh on December 05 2018 said:
    A cut of production will be agreed upon in the OPEC December meeting in Vienna. But who will be doing the cutting?

    The overwhelming majority of OPEC members are not in favour of new cuts. Instead, they will demand that Saudi Arabia and Russia withdraw the 650,000 barrels a day (b/d) they jointly added to the market in June against OPEC members’ wishes and return them to the original 1.8 million barrels a day (mbd) cut under the OPEC/non-OPEC agreement.

    Saudi Arabia will end up doing most of the cutting with some symbolic reduction from Russia estimated between 100,000-150,000 barrels a day (b/d) as a show of solidarity with the Saudis.

    There is some divergence between the Saudi and Russian approach to the cuts. Saudi Arabia needs an oil price higher than $80 a barrel to balance its budget. On the other hand, Russia can live with an oil price of $40 or even lower having benefited from the diversification drive of its economy since the 2014 oil price crash. Moreover, the bulk of Russian oil production is being carried away with private Russian companies with a small State stake. These companies have invested heavily during the last few years to raise Russia’s oil production to the highest level in the post-Soviet era. They are not keen on cuts as they want to recoup their investments very quickly.

    Saudi Arabia, therefore, finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It is being pulled in opposite directions. One direction is not to cut production as President Trump is demanding. But this is not an option for Saudi Arabia having been conned by President Trump in June on raise its production in anticipation of Iranian crude oil exports losses which haven’t so far materialized.

    The other direction is to persuade OPEC members to cut production. That will not be easy either as OPEC members will argue that Saudi Arabia should have consulted them before it succumbed to President Trump’s pressure and raised oil production in collaboration with Russia against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of OPEC members in their meeting in June.

    Were the Saudis to decide not to cut production and to continue to produce at current levels, oil prices could decline further and they will be in a worse mess than the one they faced after their decision to flood the global oil market in the aftermath of the 2014 oil price crash. Their decision then failed miserably and inflicted huge damage on the Saudi economy and the economies of OPEC members. So this is not an option as Saudi foreign exchange reserves have fallen from $750 bn in 2014 to an estimated $500 now. These will be needed to defend the Saudi currency against devaluation.

    Saudi Arabia will most probably end be up doing most of the cutting on its own with a symbolic cut from Russia.

    Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
    International Oil Economist
    Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London
  • Krippaz on December 05 2018 said:
    While I agree with you that the Saudi will probably cut back the majority of the barrels shortterm. In the longterm price need to be at a certain level to make exploration and development of new oil profitable. I don’t know what that price level is but it will go up....maybe we se a floor of 60$ for exploration now but it will go up in the future.

    Still after 30 year of solar panels and windmill we use more oil than ever.

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News