Oil Markets Plunge Deeper Into Age of Uncertainty

摘要

The failure of last week’s producer talks in Doha has plunged the oil industry even deeper into the age of uncertainty that began with Opec’s November 2014 decision to leave oil prices to the mercy of market forces. That decision still left the sense that Opec’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, had a plan, even if that plan marked a break with decades of Opec policymaking. Events in Doha, however, suggest that Saudi Arabia’s oil policy has entered a new period of unpredictability, in which its role as the “central bank of oil” could become secondary in Riyadh’s thinking to more political considerations, both external and internal (p2). The first element in this age of uncertainty relates to how oil markets would evolve under Opec’s Saudi-led market forces strategy-without the safety net of Opec intervention, how far could oil prices fall? How many oil-producing economies could be crippled? The second element concerns US shale-the single biggest new supply phenomenon of the past decade, and latterly touted as a possible de facto swing producer to replace Saudi Arabia, on account of its supposed responsiveness to price signals.