Published on :
The OPEC countries have decided to cut their oil production by 100,000 barrels a day in the face of falling oil prices linked to fears of a global recession. This decision is a first for more than a year, after the drastic production cuts made following the pandemic.
Representatives of the thirteen members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, and their ten allies led by Russia, agreed to « return to August quotas “, a drop of 100,000 barrels compared to September, announced in a press release the alliance based in Vienna.
Immediately after this announcement, the barrel of Brent from the North Sea took more than 3% to 96.40 dollars. It is clear that the Alliance aims to keep prices high. But the timing is bad, because the markets are very feverish at the moment, said Alexandre Baradez, head of market analysis at IG France. ” Unfortunately, there is a phenomenon of timing that is not good, because it follows a weekend when Russia announced that it was suspending gas deliveries via Nord Stream, which made sense from the start as a positioninganalyzes the expert interviewed by RFI. But the problem is that OPEC takes this decision when, on Monday, the commodity markets reopen. And so, there is also a tension that has appeared this morning again on gas prices in Europe and globally on all energy-related raw materials, knowing that 100,000 barrels per day, this is not is also not a drastic reduction. »
Decrease ” symbolic »
The group, which met by videoconference, leaves the door open for further discussions before the next meeting on October 5, “ to respond if necessary to market developments “. Over the course of its monthly meetings, OPEC is resisting calls from Westerners to open its floodgates more widely.
This drop is not a real surprise after the murmurs of the past few weeks. For Alexandre Baradez, “ it is symbolic insofar as it also raises questions about the actual demand capacities of the world economy: questions linked to geopolitics of course, to the restrictions of monetary policies on the part of central banks, the question of confinements in China . Finally, this drop in oil production can also be seen as a sign of OPEC’s anticipation that demand could weaken due to a global economic slowdown. ».