Overnight, Discussion Switches From Demand To Supply -- May 25, 2018

For the archives, last twenty-four hours regarding price of oil , headlines from various sources, tweets from various sources:

• Russian and Saudi Arabia discuss one million bopd production rise
• Putin says $60-oil suits Russia fully
• oil prices -- in the last 24 hours -- fell the most in 11 months in New York as Saudi Arabia said it expects OPEC and its partners to boost supplies
• let's go back in a bit -- who still thinks Saudi Arabia wants $100-oil?
• Saudi Arabia would prefer higher prices but also wants to keep the White House happy. Trump's tweet underscored the growing unhappiness of consumers and the president's willingness to make this unusually public. So Saudi Arabia's calculations changed
• my take on OPEC today: under pressure form Trump, Saudi Arabia puts brakes on oil price rally (but under the radar, also fears in Riyadh about N-OPEC act revival
• ask 100 analysts; get 100 opinions on WTI pricing today
• for newbies:
• Saudi Arabia's budget was based on $83-oil last year (2017) (didn't come close)
• Saudi Arabia's budget is based on $88 oil for this year (2018) (won't come close)
• global production / demand: around 100 million bopd
• for weeks analysts have suggested "demand" is driving increased oil prices
• now, one day that OPEC/Russia suggest increasing production by one million bopd, all of a sudden it seems discussion has shifted to production not demand

For newbies: predicting the price of oil is a fool's errand.

BPolls: Let's close out two polls. The first poll -- will WTI hit $85 by August 31, 2018?

• yes: 35%
• no: 50%
• I prefer not to answer: 11%
• other answers: 5%

For Big Oil, "size does not matter"; from articel

• agree: reserves don't matter for "Big Oil": 7%
• disagree: I understand the argument but disagree with the "reasons": 20%
• disagree: the writer is a complete doofus; size does matter, and it matters a lot: 72%
• comments: I agree with the majority. The writer is a complete doofus. For any oil company, size of reserves is incredibly important