Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Part 3 - Coronavirus, the Crude Price Slide and OPEC Production Cuts

In the global crude oil market, at least some degree of coordinated management of supply has been the norm since the end of World War II. From the mid-1940s to the early 1970s, the cabal of oil companies known as the Seven Sisters jointly managed production to keep crude prices at levels that accommodated their interests. Then it was OPEC’s turn. More recently, the efforts to keep supply from overwhelming demand — and help prevent oil prices from crashing — have been led by a combination of OPEC and some other major producers, including Russia. U.S. shale producers — who’ve contributed significantly to the global supply growth in recent years — have both benefited from this supply management and partially thwarted it by continuing to increase production to offset cuts by “OPEC-Plus.” But a projected slowdown in U.S. production growth in 2021 may change these market dynamics. Today, we begin a short blog series on global oil supply and demand trends, supply management efforts by OPEC-Plus, and what it all means for OPEC, U.S. producers and the broader oil market.

U.S. shale oil production and exports have contributed to global oversupply in recent years, which, in turn, has amplified pressure on OPEC to implement production cuts to keep crude oil prices from collapsing to untenable levels. That’s led to an agreement among most OPEC countries and nearly a dozen other non-member producing countries — together known as OPEC-Plus — to limit production, an accord that’s remained in place since January 2017. However, oversupply conditions now are also prompting U.S. oil and gas producers to pull back on their planned capital expenditures for 2020, suggesting a slowdown in U.S. production growth later this year and into 2021. Recent global oil supply and demand forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and OPEC itself suggest that such a slowdown, if it materializes, could present a window of opportunity for OPEC-Plus to relax its quotas and potentially reclaim some of its lost oil market share, at least for a time. Today, we examine what the recent changes in monthly data from IEA, EIA and OPEC indicate about potential shifts in the OPEC versus non-OPEC oil supply and demand balance and what that could mean for OPEC’s role in meeting global demand.

The November 4 decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its collaborators — collectively known as OPEC+ –– to stay the course on crude oil production surprised few and disappointed many. Officials from leading oil-consuming nations, including the U.S., Japan and India, want the group to relax its production restraint by more than the scheduled 400 Mb/d in December. They see extra crude supply as an antidote for high prices that have been hampering recovery from the global economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. But OPEC+ leaders made clear that they’re in no mood to accelerate their phase-out of production cuts. They know the market pressures now elevating crude prices won’t last forever and can change unexpectedly. They also face internal strains that might weaken the quota discipline that has kept the group’s supply management intact, despite the occasional upset, for nearly five years. One of those strains is the number of OPEC+ participants already producing as much crude as they can while falling short of existing ceilings — a number that grows as the ceilings rise. Today’s RBN blog looks at oil-market expectations underlying OPEC+ members’ cautious approach and at the growing divide among those unable to keep up with output targets and the relatively few but volumetrically overpowering counterparts with capacity to spare.