Market Movers
- A Reuters survey shows that OPEC’s production fell last month to 29.50 million bpd in the runup to the cartel’s new production quotas that started at the first of the year - a 50,000 bpd decrease month on month. Once again, the most noncompliant members were Nigeria and Iraq, the latter responsible for chronic overproduction throughout the first production agreement. While Nigeria is still not in compliance, it did manage to decrease its production by 80,000 bpd, largely due to scheduled maintenance. Iraq reduced its production too, but is still only at 59% compliance.
- Oil and gas rigs in the US fell by a total of 207 throughout all of 2019--a drop of 26%. Meanwhile, US oil production rose from 11.7 million bpd at the start of 2019 to 12.9 million bpd at the end of December. According to last week’s report--the first week of the year, another 9 rigs were shed, continuing the downward trend. It is hard for the market to change how it views the rig count in light of rising production and falling rigs.
- The API reported that crude oil inventories had fallen by 5.95 million barrels for the week ending January 3, but the news of a large draw was outshone by tensions in the Middle East.
- Russia and Turkey have successfully launched their TurkStream pipeline that will send Russian gas to Europe and Turkey in a move that not only allows Russia to ship gas at less cost, but also strengthens ties between Turkey and Russia…
