Saudi oil production push halts price rally

Brent oil price edged higher closer to $50 a barrel in early Thursday trading but the rally has been temporarily after Saudi Arabia sent signals it could boost its crude oil supplies in August to a new record.

At one point the price scaled the $50 a barrel mark but has now steadied at $49.95.

The Saudis are posturing for tough talks at next month’s meeting of the world’s leading oil producers and its sights are on bitter rival Iran which currently pumps 2.1million barrels daily plus another 600,000 barrels of condensate daily.

Traders said It’s “hard to say” whether OPEC will reach freeze deal with non-OPEC producers, said Qatar’s former energy minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah.

Analysts say another failed meeting would cause more damage than good.

According to Al Attiyah, “OPEC and non-OPEC should be very careful on holding a new meeting without proper consent and preparation”.

He added that the freeze deal wouldn’t have a huge impact on fundamentals but would boost market sentiment. He also said that the market was still oversupplied by ~1.2m bbl/day-1.5m bbl/day and may need until end-2017 to fully rebalance. Note that Al-Attiyah was OPEC president in 1999-2000 and 2003, and was Qatar’s minister of energy from 1992 to 2011.

In the meantime, data suggests that US crude oil production is holding up better than the government previously thought. The output estimate jumped by 152kbbl/day for last week, the biggest increase since May 2015, according to the EIA. Production didn’t actually increase by that amount but was modified to incorporate a “re-benchmarking” versus the agency’s Petroleum Supply Monthly, according to Jonathan Cogan, an EIA spokesman.

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