Opec: more of the same
Extending the cuts for nine months is designed to kill off the stock glut, but the pledge to keep going will buoy tight oil
Opec and its partners outside the group are sticking with the plan, convinced they will succeed in eliminating the global stock glut. But in extending their deal for nine months, to end-March 2017, they have accepted the market's judgement: the rebalancing process will take longer than they wanted or expected. Had they ended the deal as planned at end-2017, Saudi Arabia's oil minister Khalid al-Falih said, Opec's producers would have added "a large slug" of supply to the market, creating another hefty stock build. Oil ministers also discussed deeper cuts in the meeting, in Vienna on 25 May, as well as a 12-month extension. But new quotas would take weeks of preparatory negotiations, which ha
Also in this section
16 December 2025
The December 2025/January 2026 issue of Petroleum Economist is out now!
16 December 2025
Abdullah Aljarboua serves as a senior fellow in the energy macro & microeconomics programme at KAPSARC. His work spans macroeconomics, energy-economic modelling, large-scale optimisation and advanced computational techniques for modelling complex energy policy dynamics. Here he speaks with Petroleum Economist about the Gulf region’s role in shaping the energy landscape over the coming decades
16 December 2025
The 25th WPC Energy Congress, taking place in Riyadh in April 2026 brings together global leaders, scientists, policymakers and innovators at a pivotal moment in the world’s energy evolution.
15 December 2025
As contradictory as it might seem, US oil output has continued to grow over the last several years, even as drilling in the shale plays has maintained a slow decline. This improbable dichotomy is a testimony to the industry’s technological prowess
