Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries

As OPEC is set to celebrate the extension of the cartel's oil production cut for another year in Vienna, Venezuela former-oil minister and the former head of the now defaulted state energy company PDVSA have no reasons to celebrate following their overnight arrests in Venezuela.

Taking a page out of the Saudi "anti-corruption" playbook, Reuters reports citing two sources that Venezuelan authorities detained former Oil Minister Eulogio del Pino and former state oil company PDVSA president Nelson Martinez overnight as a part of a broad anti-corruption probe.

With OPEC delegates sequestered in a Vienna conference room, as they negotiate the proposed 6-9 month production cut extension, at least one appears to be leaking the decision process to media outlets, because moments ago Bloomberg reported that OPEC ministers have agreed to extend their production cuts until the end of 2018 - agreeing with the Saudi-proposed 9 month extension - and discussions have now moved on to the mechanism that will be used to review the agreement in the middle of the year.

Despite a Wednesday dive in high-flying U.S. tech stocks on worries their boom may have peaked following a MS downgrade, which presured Asian stocks leading to a slide in Hong Kong and South Korean share, on Thursday morning the dip buyers have emerged and both European stocks and US equity futures are once again solidly in the green as yesterday's tech selloff is quickly forgotten.

Goldman's Damien Courvalin seems to have perfecvtly summed things up - the market was pricing in an OPEC production cut extension of 6-9 months (accounting for around a $2.50 premium in the price). Today's jawboning from Russia seems to signal April discussions (so a 6-month extension) which is a disappointment - and so WTI prices are tumbling...

Sell the leaked, jawboned news?

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

OPEC is on the verge of extending its production cuts for an additional nine months, pushing the deal through the end of 2018. 

But the determination to keep the cuts in place comes at the same time that U.S. shale seems to be accelerating in response to higher oil prices.