A New Nominee For The 2017 Geico Rock Award -- June 16, 2017

Oil guru who foresaw the market rout in 2014 says OPEC should have cut deeper in 2016 -- Bloomberg. Well, duh. I think everyone thinks that now. Whether or not it would have worked is another question. In the US alone there was just too much in storage and shale producers were yet to ramp up in light of OPEC announced cuts. From Bloomberg:

“They should have cut another million barrels a day for ninety days in order to drain the system,” said Gary Ross, global head of oil at PIRA Energy, a forecasting and analytics unit of S&P Global Platts.

For Ross, the producers missed an opportunity to deepen cuts between June and August when refinery demand is higher and so accelerate the decline in inventories. Such a move would have pushed the market into backwardation, when near-term prices are higher than those for later months. That structure favors OPEC because it would discourage their shale-oil rivals from locking in prices for future production.

Ross’s view was echoed by analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd., who said OPEC needs to cut deeper for longer to restore inventories to normal levels. “OPEC needs to drain by 34 million barrels a month or 1 million barrels a day for the next 10 months,” the analysts wrote in a note. “This looks challenging.”

Ross also warned that Chinese crude-demand growth is set to decrease in the second half of this year. “That poses a real problem for OPEC as they enter 2018,” he said.