THE CGES OUTLOOK

摘要

Barely two weeks after OPEC’s acrimonious and inconclusive June meeting, the International Energy Agency announced that it had decided to release 60 mn bbls of oil held in strategic storage. The release was needed, it argued, to offset the loss of Libyan production of light, sweet crude oil and provide a ’bridge’ until rising production from Saudi Arabia and the other GCC members of OPEC rebalanced global oil supply and demand. The Agency had warned before OPEC’s meeting that, if the producer group failed to raise production, as even its own analysts said it needed to do, then the IEA would consider all mechanisms within its power to avoid a shortage. OPEC’s hawks ensured that Saudi Arabia’s attempts to secure an increase in output quotas failed — not least because they had little or no spare capacity to take part in any output increase themselves. The IEA duly responded, as it warned it would, by taking matters into its own hands.