Having failed to "rebalance" the oil market in the first six months following the implementation of the Vienna production cut agreement, with crude inventories in the US hitting all time highs in the interim...
Authored Op-Ed by Pepe Escobar via SputnikNews.com,
James Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Emerging Threats at NATO – now that’s a lovely title – recently gave a talk at a private club in London on the Islamic State/Daesh. Shea, as many will remember, made his name as NATO’s spokesman during the NATO war on Yugoslavia in 1999.
After his talk Shea engaged in a debate with a source I very much treasure. The source later gave me the lowdown.
The US military confirmed on Saturday that a coalition airstrike had hit an Islamic State-held area of Iraq's Mosul where as many as 240 civilians may have been killed as result of the air raid.
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
It’s been six months now that oil prices have been reacting to OPEC, first to the possibility of an agreement, and then to the production cut deal itself, forged by OPEC to rebalance the market. The deal--initially aired as ‘an agreement to agree on a deal’ in September and signed at the end of November—will likely impact the market for at least the next six months.
Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
If OPEC fails to agree to extend their production cuts for another six months, Iraq could be a major reason why.
For many years after the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iraq was exempt from OPEC’s production quotas in order to help the country rebuild. But in recent years, Iraq has succeed in ramping up its output, overtaking Iran to become OPEC’s second largest oil producer. Today, production stands at 4.4-4.5 million barrels per day (mb/d).