The Current Global Oil War

• On 8 March 2020, Saudi Arabia initiated a price war with Russia, triggering a major fall in the price of oil, with US oil prices falling by 34%, crude oil falling by 26%, and brent oil falling by 24%.
• 11th March 2020, Russia to OPEC – deeper oil cuts won’t work – Sorokin said that meant companies began to invest in high-cost oil again, reducing the impact of more output cuts by producer countries. “Sooner or later, we would have faced an oil price fall to $40 and lower, with the exit (from the deal) in six months or a year,” Sorokin said.
• 12th March 2020, In an unexpected move on March 6, Russia rejected a call by OPEC countries to further cut oil production in order to help prop up prices amid sagging global demand for energy due to the coronavirus. The decision broke three years of cooperation under an arrangement called OPEC+ and stunned participants at a meeting in Vienna, not to mention some of Russia’s own oil executives — one suggested the move was “irrational” — and governments from the Middle East to the West. OPEC leader Saudi Arabia swiftly responded to the snub by announcing it is no longer obliged to hold back production, causing the largest single-day drop in the price of oil in nearly three decades and sending global stock markets and the ruble tumbling. Why?
• 13th March 2020, Russia’s decision not to go along with the Opec-plus recommendations favored by Saudi Arabia for further cuts in oil production has triggered a price war that has sent the global oil market into a death spiral. While some analysts have singled out US shale oil production as the ultimate target of Russian action, the reality is more complex. The breach with Opec also reflects the failure of Russia’s four-year experiment to broaden relations with Saudi Arabia as well as the once-in-a-century opportunity provided by the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, which has put added downward pressure on global oil markets, thus maximizing Russia’s ability to prevail in a long-term oil price war with either the US or Saudi Arabia. In short, the confluence of Russian reaction to US energy policy, souring Russian-Saudi relations, and the impact on global energy markets of the coronavirus have created a perfect storm of geopolitical and energy security conditions conducive to Russia’s bold intervention.
• 13th March 2020, Saudi Arabia Escalates The Oil Price War – Saudi Arabia has booked multiple VLCCs to ship its crude oil, including to the US Gulf Coast, despite having its own fleet of VLCCs.
• 14th March 2020, Trump Bails Out Oil Industry, Not U.S. Families, as Coronavirus Crisis Intensifies
• 14th March 2020, U.S. Looks To Snag Market Share From Russia In Its Own Backyard – The U.S. State Department has announced “the willingness of U.S. companies to begin immediately selling oil to Belarus at competitive market prices” in a clear signal to Minsk — and neighboring Russia — of Washington’s desire to expand trade ties with the post-Soviet country of around 10 million people.
• 16th March 2020, Falling oil prices leave no chance Russia’s GDP will grow in 2020 – Russia depends heavily on hydrocarbon production taxes and needs the price of oil to stay above $45 per barrel to keep its budget balanced; Saudi Arabia, to support its target deficit of 7 percent, needs it to be around $47.50 to $50.
• 16th March 2020, Moscow is fighting an oil-market war on two fronts—with Saudi Arabia and U.S. shale – Russia’s oil-market war with Saudi Arabia is part of a strategic campaign to cripple U.S. shale-oil production, a powerful economic tool that increasingly allows Washington to advance its foreign policy agenda, say people briefed on the Kremlin’s policies
• 17th March 2020, Russia to launch fund in bid to shield economy
• 17th March 2020, Looming Recession Sparks New Oil Sell Off
• 17th March 2020, Is Saudi Arabia To Blame For The Looming Economic Recession? – Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia delivered an ultimatum to Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, to cut oil production on his terms. Mr. Putin doesn’t accept ultimatums so he ignored it. MBS cut prices and announced a production increase. Energy is the economy and most of the world’s energy comes from oil. The present devaluation of oil will spread to other commodities and currency. Although oil price devaluation was inevitable because of coronavirus, the recent Saudi price cut and production increase has accelerated and compounded its effect on the global economy. It may become a Lehman moment.
• 17th March 2020, Saudi Arabia’s decision to flood an already woefully oversupplied market has effectively started an oil price war in which Riyadh is aiming to squeeze any competition out of core markets such as Europe and Asia. The Kingdom followed up on its threat to flood the markets with oil by chartering as many as 31 supertankers to ship the extra crude. In the last couple of days, Aramco has offered their Arab Light and Arab Heavy blends for between $25 and $28 dollar per barrel in Europe, and today’s announcement to increase exports to 10 million bpd could send prices even lower. This scorched earth tactic from Saudi Arabia is quite surprising, given the fact that the Kingdom has consistently overcomplied with its OPEC+ production quota, which saw its total crude exports fall below 7 million barrels per day in January/February.
• 17th March 2020, Oil Nations Could See Income Crash By Up To 85 Percent In 2020 – Recent history shows that playing Russian roulette with the US shale industry through an oil ‘price war’ can backfire. The major victims are likely to be people in developing countries that still rely heavily on oil & gas revenues to fund their social & economic systems. The oil price war that OPEC’s top producer and de facto leader Saudi Arabia started will hurt the fiscal revenues of the oil producers in the Persian Gulf too, including those of Saudi Arabia, analysts say.

Oil Glut: After 1980, reduced demand and increased production produced a glut on the world market. The result was a six-year decline in the price of oil, which reduced the price by half in 1986 alone. [..] The Soviet Union had become a major oil producer before the glut. The drop of oil prices contributed to the nation’s final collapse.

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