It’s All Going Wrong Again for OPEC: Oil Strategy - Bloomberg

It’s All Going Wrong Again for OPEC: Oil Strategy - Bloomberg:

Even as oil producing states in OPEC and beyond begin implementing the output cuts they agreed in December, the world’s need for their crude is shrinking further, suggesting that they will need to extend the deal through the second half of the year.

The latest forecasts from supply-and-demand studies of the oil industry’s most-watched organizations – the International Energy Agency,  the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries itself – show the need for OPEC crude diminishing as demand forecasts are trimmed and U.S. supply outlooks are increased.

The industry’s three main agencies are unanimous in reducing their assessments of the volume of oil the world will need from OPEC countries this year compared with what they were forecasting last month. The average level of the reduction from the January forecast is 300,000 barrels a day, that’s about the combined production of OPEC’s two smallest members Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.