The oil ministers of Saudi Arabia and Russia held a joint presser Monday on the sidelines of the Beijing summit to telegraph an agreement for a 9-month extension of the OPEC/non-OPEC production cuts of 1.8 million barrels a day (b/d).
While not official until OPEC members meet on May 25 to ratify the deal extension, we certainly expect this to be the outcome.
As we wrote in our May 8 note, OPEC needs to change the narrative of a persistent global oversupply. The market had already priced in an automatic 6-month extension of the deal. The normal course would have been to just rollover the agreement as expected and then re-assess at the year-end meeting if another extension was necessary.
But OPEC has a sentiment deficit and a 6-month extension would have resulted in almost no immediate impact on prices. OPEC believes a 9-month extension into 2018 will provide it with a sentiment surplus and so far the market likes the move.
Press reports have now quoted every OPEC minister as supporting the deal extension, and the current price bump should ensure all members ratify the rollover to 9-months. Therefore, the OPEC component (1.2 M b/d) of the deal is assured.
However, the non-OPEC component (600,000 b/d) led by Russia will provide some challenges to the deal. Russia will gladly go along for the ride but they have once again proven to be an unreliable partner. Russia pledged 300,000 b/d in cuts for the first six months of 2017 but only hit that full amount in May just weeks before the May 25 OPEC meeting. Russia’s lack of compliance is being glossed over because of OPEC’s need of a sentiment surplus. We expect Russia’s compliance to continue to be spotty at best.
Then there are other non-OPEC participants in the deal who present problems. Kazakhstan, which first revealed Saudi trial balloons of a 9-month extension in early May, has said recently that it cannot comply with the deal extension due to its expected higher production coming online this year.
We expect that there are efforts behind the scenes by the savvy and capable OPEC Secretary General to try to persuade the Kazakhs to make the pledge again and at least try to meet compliance. If not, OPEC is already trying to find additional non-OPEC producers who would join the deal to mitigate any fallout caused by Kazakhstan or other producers. The focus seems to be on Egypt and Turkmenistan but is all about sentiment with little real impact on the math.
OPEC has very little choice but to renew the agreement. If it did not renew, prices would have collapsed.
The other major macro shift now is that Saudi oil policy is being driven by the Aramco IPO in 1H 2018 that needs a higher price range than today. As a result, the Saudi's are now acting like a central banker with Mario Draghi-esque "whatever it takes" statements.
This was one of the major takeaways from our OPEC Preview conference call last Friday with Chakib Khelil, former OPEC President and former Algerian Energy Minister. In his view, the Aramco IPO is a major factor in Saudi activism now on OPEC production and sentiment.
“There’s no doubt Saudi policy seeks stability in the market again,” Khelil said. “I believe (Saudi) Minister Falih has in mind some price target, probably $60, because that stability and price would be greatly helpful in their IPO.”
Of course, the big problem is that this policy gives clear guidance to US producers to turn on the spigots. Khelil also agreed that OPEC misjudged how quickly and by how much US shale would return with higher price signals.
“I agree it [US shale surge] was a surprise, and it poses a big dilemma for OPEC,” Khelil said. “This is the first time we see two actors in the oil market. Each one taking the lead when the conditions and market changes. When prices go down we have OPEC in the driver’s seat. When prices go up, we have oil shale in the driver’s seat. That is why we are in this uncertain oil market now - not knowing who is going to be in the driver’s seat in the next few months.”
Since the OPEC deal was announced, US producers added 600,000 b/d of crude and now approach a total of 9.3 million b/d. And then there is the “US Rig-covery”- since the OPEC deal was implemented in January, US producers have added 187 oil rigs for a total of 712 oil rigs – more than double a year ago.
We believe current forecasts for US production are conservative and expect it to be much higher at year end which will temper higher prices. EIA has already made several revisions on US production forecasts and we expect these revisions to continue.
