Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
OPEC’s new strategy to balance the oil market is to cut oil exports to the U.S., a move intended to drain near-record-high crude oil inventories.
S&P futures were fractionally lower from yesterday's record high as European stocks declined and Asian stocks were mixed, pressured by yesterday's 5% plunge in crude after OPEC unexpectedly "failed to surprise" markets, and announced the bare minimum supply cut extension that was expected by oil traders, who in turn puked long positions.
Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
OPEC has agreed to extend its production cuts for another nine months in an effort to bring the oil market back into balance. Keeping in place the 1.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) of OPEC cuts, plus the 558,000 bpd of non-OPEC reductions, for nine months rather than six should be enough to “normalize” crude oil inventories, according to most analysts.
Confident anchors across the media have been proudly proclaiming the rise above $50 as proof that the oil market is heading toward equilibrium again and OPEC's production cut deal extension will be awesome... except the market seems to be disappointed as it's clear no other non-OPEC nations will join the agreement (cough US shale cough) and "sell the news" has sent crude back below $50...
The full details are as follows:
The OPEC Vienna meeting has not officially concluded just yet, but moments ago a delegate told the WSJ and Reuters that the oil producing cartel had decided to do what had been widely telegraphed previously, and merely extend output cuts by nine months to March 2018. While the full quota breakdown has not been released yet, the cuts are likely to be shared again by a dozen non-members led by top oil producer Russia, while several nations like Iran and Nigeria will remain exempt from production caps.