Push within OPEC for extra measures

Ministers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries held an emergency virtual conference call on Tuesday to discuss the oil price plunge and possible extra measures to support the market.

However, some major oil producers within the OPEC, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates as well as nonOPEC member Russia, were absent from the meeting.

With demand collapsing due to the coronavirus crisis, the OPEC members, along with Russia and other producers — known as OPEC + — are due to start cutting supply by 9.7 million barrels per day on May 1.

But the planned record output cut has failed to stem the drop in oil prices. On Monday, US crude futures sank into negative territory for the first time, and on Tuesday Brent crude fell to $18.10 a barrel, the main benchmark’s lowest level since December 2001.

Reuters quoted an OPEC source as saying that during the emergency meeting, some ministers discussed implementing the agreed oil cuts straight away rather than waiting for May 1.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, pointed the finger at traders’ speculative bets for the plunge in global oil prices this week.

The collapse in the price for West Texas Intermediate crude is a short-term situation, and is caused by peculiarities in stock exchange trading, said Alexei Kalachev, an analyst at a Russian investment group.

Kalachev said that given that the WTI crude contract for May delivery expired on Tuesday, the negative price resulted from traders’ urgent need to liquidate an adverse position. But the market had to liquidate these positions at any price, the analyst said.

Russian analysts believe that the Brent oil price will see falls similar to those of the WTI futures for delivery in May, but the declines won’t be as long lasting.

“The situation on the physical market will remain very difficult, especially as long as the OPEC+ deal has not yet entered force. Therefore, a short period in which the Brent and Urals contracts fall below $10 cannot be ruled out,” said Dmitry Marinchenko, a senior director of Fitch Ratings.

US President Donald Trump said he believed the slump in WTI oil prices is a short-term event caused by a “financial squeeze”.

Trump said in a tweet that he had directed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to draft a bailout plan for domestic oil and gas producers “so that these very important companies and jobs will (be) secure long into the future”.

However, Trump offered no further details, nor any indication of when plans may be presented to Congress.