OPEC is doing its best to offset supply disruptions around the world, but it has no intention of "overdoing it", Bloomberg reports, citing the cartel’s president, UAE’s energy minister Suhail al-Mazrouei.
"It’s unfair to say that OPEC is not doing its part," Al-Mazrouei said, referring to President Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against the cartel for not doing enough to re-balance the market. "There are things outside of our hand, the geopolitics as well as how much production is coming from the shale oil and Canadian sands."
There have been reports that Saudi Arabia has boosted its oil production by almost half a million bpd in June, and the UAE has spare capacity of between 400,000 and 600,000 bpd, Al-Mazrouei said, adding that OPEC as a whole has enough spare capacity to offset any shortage.
Last month, OPEC and Russia agreed to boost production by a million barrels daily to reduce prices that had gotten uncomfortably high for the biggest importers. At the time, Saudi Arabia’s Khalid al-Falih said the number was "nominal" since not all OPEC members had the spare capacity to boost production. But now there is growing worry that even a one-million-bpd increase will not be enough.
The United States wants to cut Iran’s oil exports of crude to zero barrels from more than 2 million bpd at the moment. Saudi Arabia has stated it has spare capacity of 2 million bpd, but bringing it back online—if it is indeed so large—will take more than a day or two, analysts have warned. In fact, it could take as long as a year to boost production by 2 million bpd.
This has had traders worried that the market is in for a shortage, which will cause prices to jump even higher, with some forecasting Brent at over US$100 a barrel.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
