Biggest Takeaway from OPEC Meeting? Civility

There are two ways of looking at the OPEC meeting in Vienna, and neither is wrong. Firstly it was a success as the Saudis and Iranians managed to be relatively nice to each other, and secondly it was a failure because everybody can still pump as much oil as they feel like.

The market expectations had been set so low for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting yesterday in the Austrian capital that the positive view appears to be more common in the post-conference assessments.

The April gathering in Doha, which included non-OPEC major Russia, was widely viewed as a debacle because the market had expected a production freeze to be agreed and instead they got an acrimonious breakdown between Gulf rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

While Thursday’s OPEC meeting also failed to agree any production limits, or indeed a clear-cut strategy for the group, there were some encouraging signs.

The first was that new Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih struck a conciliatory note and tried to reassure the market that his country, the world’s largest crude exporter, would act responsibly.

“We will be very gentle in our approach and make sure we don’t shock the market in any way,” Falih told reporters.

via Reuters

Content is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc. or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. If you would like to reproduce or redistribute any of the content found on MarketPulse, an award winning forex, commodities and global indices analysis and news site service produced by OANDA Business Information & Services, Inc., please access the RSS feed or contact us at info@marketpulse.com. Visit https://www.marketpulse.com/ to find out more about the beat of the global markets. © 2023 OANDA Business Information & Services Inc.

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