Growing Gulf

摘要

Opec has no formal production agreement any more. Collective production restraint has been abandoned. The overriding question of how oil markets will develop centres on what Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia individually decide to do over the next 12 months. Opec’s current production policy does not depend on friend- ly relations between members in other areas any more than previous agreements did. Rising tensions between Opec’s Mideast Gulf members will only exacerbate a growing regional oil surplus, and prices refect this.