Liam Denning, Columnist

OPEC’s Banking on a Christmas Miracle

Oil-demand forecasts for the year read more like letters to Santa.

August 27, 2019 at 2:38 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

OPEC+ officials need a dramatic finish to 2019.
Photographer: AFP Contributor/AFP/Getty Images

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OPEC’s latest communique to an oil market mostly on vacation (or wishing it was) is almost a master class in positive spin. Almost.

It begins with all the right phrases: “critical value”, “commitment”, “market stability”. These tee up the main message, which is that OPEC+ members are going above and beyond their pledge to withhold supply in order to support oil prices. Compliance was a robust 159% in July, according to the group, bringing the average for the year so far to 134%. In other words, fret not oil bulls, OPEC & Co. have your back.