OPEC Cuts? Another View -- May 16, 2017

Updates

May 21, 2017: see this post, also.

Original Post

 From the newsletter that was released two days ago over at Focus on Fracking:

... from this table of official production data, we can see that OPEC oil output was down by a statistically insignificant 18,200 barrels per day in April, to 31,732,000 barrels per day, from a March oil production total of 31,750,000 barrels per day, a figure that was revised 178,000 barrels per day lower than what was reported last month...

... recall that OPEC committed to reducing their production by 1.2 million barrels per day from their October levels (shown here, with Indonesia, who is no longer a member), so these figures show that the total production of the remaining 13 members is within a half percent of the level they agreed to cut back to....

... but note that over 60 thousand barrels of this month's reduction came from Libya, a country that was exempt from the cuts, because their production had been disrupted by domestic unrest....

... news over the past few weeks indicates that Libya has restored over 180,000 barrels per day of production from two oil fields in the western part of the country, and a report just a few days ago indicated that Libya’s oil production is now running above 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) for the first time since 2014, so we can thus expect that May OPEC production will be that much higher...

The IEA report released in the past 24 hours suggests things are not as rosy as the IEA headline. Another story of the same here.