Liam Denning, Columnist

OPEC Bludgeons the Oil Market. And What Then?

Nothing the cartel decides next week will address its lack of flexibility.

June 15, 2018 at 5:39 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.

Austrian policemen guard the entrance to OPEC headquarters in Vienna on May 24, 2017.
Photographer: JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images

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The hardest-working oil in the world comes from Saudi Arabia. As the kingdom prepares for next week’s meeting of the so-called Vienna Group – OPEC, Russia and some others – consider a few things those multi-tasking barrels must do:

You’ll notice I didn’t even get into the issue of rival non-OPEC supply, particularly from the U.S., and how it responds to prices being nudged this way and that. The sheer difficulty of balancing all these interests over the long term should be kept in mind as next week’s drama plays out.