I’ve been skeptical about the OPEC/non-OPEC production cuts since day one.
As I outlined earlier this month, oil is a weapon of sorts for a number of countries who are fighting on opposite sides of the sectarian proxy wars raging across the Mid-East and you can expect all sides to drop their commitments in the event we get a meaningful escalation by any party. If we get the kind of political turmoil we saw at the beginning of this year when Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran then all bets are truly off.
You see, although producers benefit from higher prices, geopolitical concerns predominate and that will manifest itself in an unwillingness to stick to the cuts in a diplomatic pinch.
In any event, I found the following two tables from Goldman interesting in terms of having a reference point for the expected cuts. More on this later…
