Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Why Oil-Producing Countries Keep on Pumping

Russia, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. all have their own reasons.

August 24, 2015 at 2:37 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Just keep pumping.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

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The big oil producing countries keep on pumping, even though prices are at a six-year low: Don't they know they're only making things worse? Chances are they do -- each has its own reasons to continue -- but this won't go on forever. Someone will blink in the next year or so, most probably U.S. shale producers.

In the U.S., the crude oil price has dipped below $40 a barrel. Brent, the European blend, trades below $45. Still, output from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries increased to 31.5 million barrels a day in July.