For your cartels and game theory lecture:
When officials from OPEC, Russia and some other oil-producing countries meet this weekend in Doha, Qatar, to discuss freezing petroleum production at current levels, the session’s significance might have more to do with style than substance.
The fact is that the two biggest players at the meeting — Saudi Arabia and Russia — are already pumping virtually flat out. They have little room to increase production even if they wanted to.
But signals the two countries have sent recently, indicating they would rather discuss cooperation than continue cutthroat competition, have buoyed oil prices well above their lows in mid-January, when the Brent crude international benchmark dipped below $30 a barrel. On Monday Brent crude was trading above $41.
Analysts, oil buyers and speculators will be watching the Doha meeting mainly to see whether the 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia show signs of being able to cooperate enough to exercise market discipline — and maybe even to cut production at some point, if necessary, to bolster oil prices.
Signs of disharmony, or a last-minute cancellation of the summit, might send oil prices plummeting yet again, and possibly stir up the broader financial market anxieties that accompanied the winter sell-off.
via www.nytimes.com
