Russia and main oil producing nations fail to reach agreement on output cut
Three major oil producing nations and Russia’s state oil company failed to reach an agreement on Tuesday regarding a reduction in the oil cartel’s 'official' oil output target.
They were meeting ahead of the Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) summit due to be held in Vienna on 27 November.
According to various reports the only decision adopted by the representatives from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and OAO Rosneft was to meet again in three months’ time to discuss the state of the oil market.
On the whole, analysts were evenly split between those who expect the cartel to agree on a reduction and those who do not, according to a recent survey conducted by Bloomberg News.
However, for some experts Saudi Arabia, who is regarded as the key producer within OPEC, given that it has the largest amount of spare capacity, has for some time now been silently laying the groundwork for a gradual reduction in supplies.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that OPEC produced approximately 30.7m barrels a day of crude in September, which is above the cartel’s ‘official’ target of 30m barrels.
As of 18:36 front month Brent crude futures were moving lower by 1.22% to $78.72 per barrel on the ICE.