Ellen Wald, PhD | Nov 08, 2018 21:20
This week there have been several important developments related to oil and gas that will affect markets for the rest of this year and into 2019.h3 1. Iran Sanctions/h3
On Monday, November 5, new U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks and Iran’s oil industry came into effect. As expected, the United States has offered exemptions to some importers of Iranian oil. This will permit these countries to continue purchasing Iranian oil for a period of 180 days. These exemptions, called Significant Reduction Exemptions, or SREs, were given to certain importers who requested them and were able to show reductions in the amount of oil and condensate they had been buying from Iran.
What we know about these exemptions so far:
President Trump told increased production to make up for involuntary declines in other countries, in order to bring the group’s overall compliance to 100%. The JMMC will be considering the supply and demand projections into 2019 at this meeting and could make a recommendation on whether the group should maintain, cut or increase oil production at the OPEC and OPEC+ meeting in December.
Iran, of course, would like some other OPEC members to stop exceeding their supply allocations in order to push up prices, but Saudi Arabia and Russia are unlikely to bow to Iranian pressure. Saudi Arabia is signaling that it might seek to tweak production levels to make sure the market doesn’t become over-supplied again, but cutting production is never that simple. Russia is already saying it is planning to produce more oil in the coming months, and the way Saudi Arabia has structured the OPEC+ group means that any move to freeze or limit oil production will require Russian support.
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