Liam Denning, Columnist

Oil Market Is Desperate for Saudi Arabia to Flatten the Curve

Immediate production cuts are needed to extend the deadline for storage capacity maxing out, but that only buys time.

April 3, 2020 at 4:59 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.

A lot of things need to go right — and quickly — to justify a hopeful outcome for oil producers.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

It is entirely fitting that the one of best performing energy stock on Friday morning was recently bankrupt Whiting Petroleum Corp. As President Donald Trump’s initial tweet-heard-round-the-(oil)-world has snowballed into a seething mass of optimistic rumor, so the more — how to put this? — speculative stocks have floated to the top. Just as crude oil recorded a 25% gain Thursday by moving all of $5 a barrel, Whiting was near the top of the leaderboard on the back of a 4-cent rally.

Saudi Arabia’s call for an emergency Zoom session on Monday, along with reports that Russia may be coming around to the idea of supply cuts, lend credence to the idea that, even if Trump wildly jumped the gun, cuts are coming. Cue mass celebration in the oil market.