US Oil Officials Doubt Success of OPEC Freeze

A senior U.S. energy official said he doubted the success of a proposal by OPEC and non-OPEC producers to freeze crude oil output in an oversupplied market and boost prices.

Oil prices have crashed 70 percent in the past 20 months, driven by near-record production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers, mainly Russia.

In an attempt to stabilize prices, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela have agreed a deal to freeze production at January levels if other producers do the same.

“I am highly skeptical of this deal,” said Amos J. Hochstein, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy for international energy affairs. “Locking in countries’ production near historic production highs does not change an oversupplied market.”

Russia and OPEC were both pumping oil at near-record volumes last month, with Russia reaching another post-Soviet high of 10.88 million barrels per day (bpd).

Russia believes the oversupply of around 1.8 million bpd could be halved if the deal to freeze oil production at January levels takes effect.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza