Tag OPEC

That’s not what’s called spare capacity

Emmanuel Macron reportedly said this to Joe Biden a couple of days ago: I had a call with MbZ [UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan]… He told me two things. I’m at a maximum, maximum (production capacity). This is…

Pretend it’s voluntary

News from S&P Global Platts on the upcoming OPEC+ meeting (online): Saudi Arabia and Russia… have insisted that they will only participate [in an agreement to reduce oil output] if the US also agrees to production cuts. A condition unlikely…

The meltdown

Saudi Arabia has responded to Russia’s refusal to cooperate by cutting prices and threatening (credibly, it seems) to raise output: The kingdom plans to pump more than 10m [million, not thousand] barrels a day next month while announcing unprecedented discounts…

A Matter of CapEx

Ronald Smith, also known as Ron Smith, Citigroup’s oil and gas analyst covering Russia and the CIS, argues in the Financial Times (if you cannot access it, try googling the title and reading Google’s cache) that Russia is likely to…

“What falleth, that shall one also push”

Almost two months ago, in October 2016, I wrote that Russian oil companies could reduce their daily oil output by slowing down production growth at newly launched fields and by reinvesting less in mature fields, increasing their decline rate to…

“No more growth” is the message?

OPEC expects Russia to produce at the same average rate in 2017 as in 2016, which means a slight decrease from the current daily output. The IEA acknowledges that, if Russia can continue pumping at the same rate as in October,…

A painless cut

Bloomberg cites Putin supporting a universal oil freeze: “Russia is ready to join in joint measures to limit output and calls on other oil exporters to do the same,” Putin said on Monday at the World Energy Congress in Istanbul.…