Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries

One year ago, the imminent arrival of helicopter money among endless discussions of pervasive lowflation was all the rage within high-finance policy circles. Then, everything changed as if on a dime, and in recent months the dominant topic has been global coordinated tightening - and in some cases even revisions to central bank mandates and the lowering of inflation targets - perhaps as a result of central banks' realization that monetizing debt by central banks leads to bad outcomes, not to mention global asset bubbles.

But not everywhere.

WTI/RBOB gained on the day after OPEC headlines but with disruptions still looming over much of the refining capacity in the Gulf Coast, today's API data, showing the trend of Gasoline draw (the biggest ever) and Crude build continues, sparked further gains.

API

Confirming Monday leaks that OPEC production had dipped last month, the just released OPEC report for the month of September confirmed that in September, OPEC produced 32.755mmb/d (according to secondary source data), a drop of 79,100 bpd, and the first monthly decline in 4 months.  According to the underlying data, in the last month output increased in Nigeria (+138.3Kb/d), while declining in Libyam Gabon, Venezuela and Iraq. Saudi Arabia.

In this week's MacroVoices podcast, Erik Townsend and Joe McMonigle, former chief of staff at the US Department of Energy, discuss the state of the global energy market, and OPEC’s rapidly diminishing ability to control oil prices. McMonigle believes investors will be hearing more jawboning from the Saudis, OPEC's de-facto leader, over the next two weeks as they try to marshal support for extending the cartel's production-cut agreement past a March 2018 deadline.

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

U.S. shale has taken a lot of headline space recently as the biggest headwind for oil prices and the highest stumbling block for OPEC’s efforts to prop them up by cutting production. Yet, there may be another factor that could bring down oil prices as soon as next year...

China.