Submitted by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,
The way things are shaping up on the oil price panic barometer, 17 April is now a D-Day of sorts for the industry. It’s the day both OPEC and non-OPEC countries will (reportedly) sit down together in Doha, Qatar, to work towards an output freeze deal.
One of the most farcical instances of report-it-then-promptly-deny-it headline hockey since last summer’s Greek bailout drama has been the incessant barrage of “news” surrounding the oft-celebrated oil output freeze deal struck last month by the Saudis, Qatar, Venezuela, and Russia.
Submitted by Art Berman via ArtBerman.com,
Oil prices should fall, possibly hard, in coming weeks. That is because fundamentals do not support the present price.
Prices should fall to around $30 once the empty nature of an OPEC-plus-Russia production freeze is understood. A return to the grim reality of over-supply and the weakness of the world economy could push prices well into the $20s.
On Tuesday, Kuwait's oil minister Anas al-Saleh delivered a rather stark warning to the rest of OPEC when he said the following about the much ballyhooed crude output freeze: "I'll go full power if there's no agreement. Every barrel I produce I'll sell.”
Submitted by Dwayne Purvis via OilPrice.com,
In the geopolitical and oligopolistic global oil market, purely financial supply and demand has often been a secondary force, acting when it is allowed to act. It is the strategic behavior of the producing titans, not their talk or the slow-motion supply-demand balance, which has the real power to move markets. That is the case in the last two years and remains the case in 2016.