The oil market is reportedly nervous in the run-up to the Algiers meeting of next week.
Why? A lot of things directly or otherwise linked to that market have recently occurred. Here are but a few. Oil prices unsurprisingly fell on yesterday afternoon after Saudi Arabia announced it “doesn’t expect any decision” next week at OPEC’s informal meeting in Algiers. Oil Market and OPEC’s non decision stance as demonstrated by the Saudis and Iranian respective oil Ministers are definitely not the only culprit.
The latest news on the Algeria meeting is that Saudi Arabia reportedly sent an offer to Iran, proposing a cut to its output if Iran agreed to limit production at its current level of 3.6 million barrels per day (BpD). Saudi Arabia offers to curb output if Iran accepts the proposed production capping level. “The Saudis are ready for a cut but Iran has to agree to freeze,” a reliable source told Reuters. Talks are on-going but so far there is no agreement of any significance. Meanwhile, Bloomberg surveying oil analysts informed that 21 out of 23 respondents said that there would be no agreement in Algeria thus confirming what is known for some time.
In the meantime, Nigeria and Libya are increasing their production thus affecting the so-called production freeze negotiations meant to take place in Algiers next week, and helping make this meeting look even less relevant in importance.
Russia has been investing in their aging oil fields in Siberia, rather trying out unexplored to date fields. This is carried out with apparently the objective of raising output whilst keeping costs down. The FT published a must-read article on Russia’s campaign to boost oil production from drilling in existing brownfield sites, as opposed to drilling in frontier regions like the Arctic, is a shift of focus for Russia’s oil industry.
China’s renewables installations to fall next year its central government is looking at paring back subsidies for its renewables programmes simply because of its economy is noisily slowing down. In effect, China’s demand for renewables, which is still the largest in the world as predicted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance impacting its pace of solar and wind installations, will decline by 11 percent next year. This might have an enormous impact on the global solar and wind industries.
Exxon embroiled in possible court standing for their alleged hiding knowledge of Climate Change are these days considering selling $1 billion of their Norway assets. Bloomberg says that the oil major has had unconfirmed discussions on selling Norwegian oil fields that produce around a 65,000 barrels per day.
French oil giant Total SA slashes spending through deeper cuts in spending this September, hoping it will improve its profitability. The move call for sharper cuts to spending, boosting operational efficiency, and increase oil and gas production.
In the meantime, India is talking to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia to fill half of the 1.5 million tonnes (mt) of the Mangalore strategic storage, along with Iranian crude, its oil minister said last week. The country is exploring two to three other models for sourcing oil to fill the remainder of the storage.
Truth-out.org published an article on Exxon-Mobil that is worth reading. We would advise its attentive reading for purposes of spreading further as it were the news.
