News with a double economic and political importance: OPEC + is evaluating a production cut of 2 million barrels per day for today’s meeting. Sources close to the organization report this. OPEC + brings together the oil exporting countries that are members of OPEC, with the addition of Russia and other important producers who coordinate their energy policy with OPEC.
Such a sharp cut would drastically reduce the global supply of crude oil and would have the effect of rocketing the international price of oil. In recent days, the hypothesis of cutting 1 million barrels was circulated, which was already quite a lot. With 2 million the effect on the price per barrel would be even stronger.
It is not certain that today things really go this way: meetings of this kind are held to decide, not to ratify decisions already taken. But if the prediction were confirmed, the significance of such a cut would be not only economic but also political. The United States (and Western Europe) would like to keep the price of oil low to reduce domestic and international inflation and also to hit the revenues of Russia, which has one of the main export items in crude oil. To this end, Washington, relying on its traditional friendship with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in recent days had urged these countries to fight not for a cut, but for a confirmation or even for an increase in crude oil production. If, on the other hand, the Arabs preferred to join forces with Russia in OPEC +, the Western strategy of isolating Moscow would suffer a partial failure.