, Columnist
OPEC's Cuts Are Treading Water
A long way to go for inventories to really shrink.
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The first place that OPEC's output cuts ought to show up is in the volume of oil moving across the world's oceans from producing countries to consumers. That is happening, but more slowly than we might reasonably expect. It looks like it will be a while before global inventories are back to levels that OPEC's comfortable with.
Most of the group's crude is exported by sea. This means any reduction in supply should quickly show up in a smaller volume of crude in ships leaving member nations.