Published in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
"The OPEC meetings will result in nothing of substance," Omar Al-Ubaydli, program director for international and geopolitical studies at the Bahrain Center for Strategic, International and Energy Studies, said in an email. "Output freezes are of virtually no significance when those committing to them are producing at capacity or close to capacity, which is the case for many oil producers at the moment," he said. "Whenever the stakes are this high, expect a lot of rhetoric from oil producers and analysts as they jockey for position."
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Published on Marketplace.org
For one, struggling Petro-states could benefit from sending key signals to domestic audiences back home. "The citizens are wondering, 'there must be something you can do,'" said Omar al-Ubaydli, international studies director of the Bahrain Center for Strategic International and Energy Studies and affiliated professor of economics at George Mason University. "So, just like when you get a crisis in any country, it's not acceptable for the government to look like it's doing nothing. So they have to at least look like they are doing something." And he said it's important to keep signaling to the market that prices are going up and may continue to. The price of crude has risen for three months now, from less than $30 a barrel to more than $40. Quotation: Still-mighty OPEC tries to maintain oil’s recent price gains, considers freezing output"4/15/2016 Published in Financial Post
“This plan that involves all these producers working together is dead on arrival,” said Arlington-based Omar Al-Ubaydli, program director for international and geopolitical studies at the Bahrain Centre for Strategic International and Energy Studies. Al-Ubaydli said the meeting is no more than “political grandstanding,” especially since many oil exporters, stung by anemic economies since the oil price collapse, must allay their citizens’ concerns. “It’s much more about the governments involved showing their citizens that they are trying to raise oil prices, and that the blame for falling oil prices doesn’t lie with them,” he said. Published on MarketWatch:
“The primary motivation for Saudi Arabia and others to continue acting as if these meetings will have a tangible effect is that they are grandstanding for their constituents; they want to show them that they are trying, but that it is external forces that are preventing them from securing high oil prices,” said Omar Al-Ubaydli, a program director at the Bahrain Center for Strategic, International and Energy Studies. He believes that the recent rise in oil prices is “far more reflective of fundamentals,” which include decreased oil investment and pressure on U.S. production, rather than any “supposed coordination among oil producers.” If prices jump after the meeting, “it will be mostly reflective of short-term speculation, and will peter back down to what market fundamentals would predict shortly thereafter,” said Al-Ubaydli. Published in Investor's Business Daily
But a freeze, no matter how many countries join, won’t have a real, fundamental impact on prices, said Omar al-Ubaydli, an affiliated senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “Russia is basically producing at capacity, so a freeze doesn’t really mean anything,” he told IBD. “It just means they aren’t going to invest in increasing their capacity. That’s already something that’s financially unwise to do. So it’s all show and politics and grandstanding.” While there might be a little spike or dip after the Doha meeting, it won’t set the stage for a quota system in the future, Al-Ubaydli said. |
Omar Al-Ubaydli
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