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Opinion
Julian Lee

OPEC's Lost Its Team Spirit

Expectations are high OPEC will keep it together and extend its historic output-cut agreement. The price crash will be huge if it doesn't.

The risk of OPEC's output deal collapsing is small, but it's not zero. 

The risk of OPEC's output deal collapsing is small, but it's not zero. 

Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
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OPEC's historic output agreement may be teetering on the edge of collapse. It wouldn’t be in the interest of a single cartel member, but then nor was letting that last deal implode in March. Ignoring the risk of another breakdown seems blinkered.

What was meant to be a pretty straightforward meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries broke up spectacularly on Monday. So they pushed back a gathering with their OPEC+ allies from Tuesday to Thursday in order to allow themselves more time to try to reach agreement internally first.