Posted on 03/01/2017 7:49:51 AM PST by bananaman22
Two years ago, OPEC took steps to increase its market share. It continued with this same policy for two years by pumping oil in an oversupplied market. The result: oil prices tanked and OPEC increased their market share by a small margin. Today, low oil prices are crippling the finances of OPEC members, forcing them to agree to cut production to support oil prices.
But just over a month of production cuts and data shows that OPEC has lost around 5 percent market share in Asia since October.
The U.S., Brazil, Britain and Libya have increased their supply to Asia from 10.4 million barrels in October 2016 to over 35 million barrels in February of this year. This is bad news for OPEC, and may be a major hurdle in extending the production cuts beyond the stipulated six-month period.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Hey, why not announce a big price increase!
I love free markets. :-)
Gee that’s too bad.
Maybe this is punishment for 9/11 since GWB sold us out and let them off the hook.
There will never again be a 1974 type oil embargo. OPEC nations are desperate for hard currency. They will sell to anyone who can pay them. Otherwise their economies will collapse and so will their governments. New technology has greatly increased the supply of oil that the US can again become an exporter. American foreign policy and commitments will gradually reflect this new economic reality.
OPEC was a reaction to the Seven Sisters cartel and always had a strong nationalist and racist/anti-imperialist motivation behind it. That is largely gone now so there isn't anything to keep the cartel members honest.
Andrew Carnegie once told a biographer that he was always happy to join any cartel as long as he was reasonable sure he could arrange to be the first to cheat on it. After all, that is where the real profit lies.
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