비슷한 논조의 기사가 2개 나왔다.
6월 22일 OPEC 회담은 여러가지로 어려운 회담이 될 것이다.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-03/coming-soon-opec-s-worst-meeting-ever-part-2
Coming Soon: "OPEC's Worst Meeting Ever, Part 2"
You know how, a few years after a Hollywood blockbuster gets released, it seems to get a remake? Well, it looks Saudi-Arabia’s oil minister Khalid Al-Falih is setting himself up to reboot his predecessor's 2011 hit – "OPEC's Worst Meeting."
His starting point is an about face. Al-Falih had said as recently as April that the group’s output cuts should be extended and the goalposts moved. But in what looks like a response to President Donald Trump's April 20 tweet attacking the group, Saudi Arabia has gone from advocating higher prices to trying to stop the rally at $80 a barrel.
Al-Falih must now convince fellow OPEC ministers at their next meeting, on June 22, that they need to raise production.
The parallels with seven years ago are clear. Then, OPEC had an output ceiling that had been unchanged for two and a half years and the kingdom saw clear signs that the market was overheating and required more oil from the producer group. Members such as Iran and Venezuela, who couldn't boost their own production either as a result of capacity constraints or sanctions, rejected the Saudi proposal to raise output.
Since OPEC acts by consensus, this doomed the meeting to failure. The group could not even agree on the text of a closing press release and the Saudi oil minister called it "one of the worst meetings" he had attended in almost 16 years in the job.
Roll forward to the present day and we have a very similar dynamic. Saudi Arabia wants to boost supply – although it is not yet clear by how much. Iran, facing renewed sanctions on its oil exports, is looking at a drop in output that could be at least as big as the 1 million to 1.2 million barrels a day it suffered shortly after the 2011 meeting.
Venezuela, too, has nothing to gain by agreeing to raise production. Its oil industry is collapsing under economic and political strains. Output has already dropped by 520,000 barrels a day from the October 2016 baseline for cuts, against a promised reduction of just 95,000. It’s set to fall further.
So not only will Saudi Arabia be asking Iran and Venezuela to go against their own immediate economic interests by backing a policy change that will lower oil prices, it will be asking them to do so at the behest of President Trump. That's the same President Trump who the leaders of both countries see as trying to topple them.
Al-Falih met with counterparts from other Gulf Arab nations in Kuwait Saturday in an attempt to bring them onside with the new plan. As they are among the few countries in the production-cutting group with the capacity to raise output, that is the easy part of the deal. Selling it to the rest will be much more difficult.
The drop in Venezuelan supply has taken the OPEC+ output cuts well beyond their agreed level and undoubtedly helped to accelerate the depletion of excess inventories. Easing the restrictions now may well amount to no more than bringing the cuts back into line with what the group agreed in 2016. But that alone would add more than 800,000 barrels a day to supply.
The principal aim of the Organization shall be the coordination and unification of the petroleum policies of Member Countries and the determination of the best means for safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively.
A pullback might be what it takes to keep Russia working with OPEC, placating a Russian oil sector that wants to raise production. But it risks undermining OPEC's statue, which includes the following article:
The principal aim of the Organization shall be the coordination and unification of the petroleum policies of Member Countries and the determination of the best means for safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively.
There are plenty of members in addition to Venezuela and Iran who are unable to raise output, and who could argue that easing production restrictions fails to safeguard their interests.
In 2011, a group of countries blocked a Saudi attempt to raise the group's output ceiling. The kingdom continued to pump more anyway, boosting its output by 1.6 million barrels a day over the first eight months of 2011. At their next gathering individual output targets were abandoned. Don't be surprised to see Saudi Arabia and Russia following their own path if they fail to carry the rest of the OPEC+ group with them.
The next OPEC meeting is preceded by the two-day OPEC Seminar, a showcase event for the group that attracts the CEOs of most of the world's biggest oil companies. The group likes to use this jamboree as a chance to demonstrate its unity. This time around speculation in the grand palaces of Vienna will be whether OPEC is about to be superceeded by SaRuPEC - the Saudi-Russia Petroleum Exporting Combine. Now that would be a real twist to the remake.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Geopolitical-Tensions-Reach-Boiling-Point-Ahead-Of-OPEC-Meeting.html
Geopolitical Tensions Reach Boiling Point Ahead Of OPEC Meeting
The upcoming OPEC meeting on June 22 is shaping up to be a contentious one, after news broke that the U.S. government asked Saudi Arabia to increase oil production before Washington pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Earlier last week, news surfaced that the U.S. government asked Saudi Arabia to boost output to relieve pressure on prices. But Reuters followed up with a report on June 7, adding more context to that story. According to Reuters, a high level Trump administration official called Saudi Arabia a day before Trump was set to announce the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, asking for more oil supply to cover for disruptions from Iran.
The last time the U.S. government pressured OPEC into adding supply, it was also over Iran. The Obama administration wanted the cartel to offset disrupted Iranian production, after an international coalition put stringent sanctions on Iran in 2012. Roughly 1 million barrels per day were knocked offline.
While the Trump administration’s request might irk OPEC members, with Iran obviously the most aggrieved, the apparent willingness of Saudi Arabia to comply with Washington’s request has ignited furor from within the group.
“It’s crazy and astonishing to see instruction coming from Washington to Saudi to act and replace a shortfall of Iran’s export due to their Illegal sanction on Iran and Venezuela,” Iran’s OPEC governor, Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, said in comments to Reuters. He said that OPEC would not simply comply with Washington’s requests. “No one in OPEC will act against two of its founder members,” he said, referring to Iran and Venezuela. “The U.S. tried it last time against Iran, but oil prices got to $140 a barrel.”
“OPEC will not accept such a humiliation. How arrogant and ignorant one could be (to) underestimate the history of 60 years’ cooperation among competitors,” he said.
Venezuela wrote to OPEC members, asking them to denounce U.S. sanctions, a request similar to the one Iran made recently. “I kindly request solidarity and support from our fellow members,” Venezuelan oil minister Manuel Quevedo wrote. The group should discuss “the constraining effects of unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States of America, which represent an extraordinary aggression, financially and economically, for our national oil industry’s operations and the stability of the market.”
The comments suggest that a good portion of the cartel is lining up against any move to increase production. It could set the stage for a heated meeting in Vienna in two weeks’ time. “It might be one of the worst OPEC meetings since 2011," Eugen Weinberg of Commerzbank told CNBC.
He was referring to the infamous 2011 meeting that fell apart over sharp differences in opinion, with Saudi Arabia wanting to increase production to ease triple-digit oil prices following the conflagration in parts of North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring. But the Saudis were shot down by much of the rest of the group, which opposed lifting output. Former Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said it was “one of the worst meetings we have ever had.”
Although not exactly the same, the differences back then echo those of today. Saudi Arabia, wary of hurting global economic growth and also cautious about not incentivizing too much high-cost supply, wants to add some barrels back onto the market.
Just about every OPEC member outside of the Gulf is unable to increase production anyway, so it is of little surprise that they are opposed to higher production. Venezuela’s output is falling fast. Angola is also losing production. Libya and Nigeria seemed to have hit a temporary ceiling, with security issues always looming as a supply risk. Also, they don’t have official limits on their output as part of the OPEC deal, so there is little upside for them in supporting production increases from other countries.
Iran, obviously, is facing production outages from U.S. sanctions, so it likely can’t increase output even if it wanted to. Officials from Iraq and Algeria made negative comments over the past week about the possibility of higher output.
From the non-OPEC camp, Mexico’s production is falling anyway, so it has little to no ability to respond to change in policy.
Ultimately, the only beneficiaries of higher production would be Saudi Arabia and Russia, and to a lesser extent some of the Gulf States like Kuwait and the UAE.
But, Saudi Arabia and Russia probably can’t simply allot themselves more production allowances without risking a full-blown revolt from the rest of the group. So, they will likely need to allocate more production to everyone, but even the act of deciding on a formula will also be highly contentious. Still, it will be somewhat of a formality for most members since they can’t increase production anyway.
So, there are a few possibilities from the upcoming meeting. First, Saudi Arabia and Russia convince the group to agree to an increase in output, and while everyone nominally is allowed to increase output a bit, the two top producers make up the lion’s share of the increase. That will require sacrifice from much of the group, who won’t be able to increase production and will have to stomach lower oil prices.
Another possibility is a breakdown in negotiations and Saudi Arabia and Russia go their own way, increasing output. Or, talks could breakdown and there is no change in output, although with the upside risk to prices, this seems unlikely.
Whatever the outcome, odds are that the upcoming meeting is the most combative we have seen in a while.
By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com