• 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
  • 48 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 6 days If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 11 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 10 days Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
Editorial Dept

Editorial Dept

More Info

Oil Cutbacks Coming, But More Supply in the Works

Friday, December 11, 2015

In the latest edition of the Numbers Report, we’ll take a look at some of the most interesting figures put out this week in the energy sector. Each week we’ll dig into some data and provide a bit of explanation on what drives the numbers.

Let’s take a look.

1. OPEC’s Spare Capacity

- OPEC still has room to ramp up production
- Iran is expected to bring 0.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) to 1 mb/d next year.
- Saudi Arabia has 2 mb/d to work with, although it’s highly unlikely it will drawdown a large portion of that.
- In fact Saudi Arabia’s 2 mb/d is historically low. OPEC had more than 6 mb/d in spare capacity in 2002 for example.
- Libya’s figures are not counted in the chart above. Although widespread violence and an ongoing political and security crisis will prevent full restoration of its potential, Libya still has over 1 mb/d in unused oil potential. Some of that could come back if one or both of the rival government factions can manage to open up oil export terminals.
- In the near-term, OPEC could add more crude to the oversupplied market. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Libya all could chip in to raise global supplies.

2. Oil prices track speculative movements 

- Oil prices tend to move with the speculative movements of oil traders. When speculators bet oil prices will rise, there is upward pressure on prices, and vice versa.

-…




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