OPEC Is Making Even Deeper Cuts Than Planned

OPEC not only continued to cut its crude oil production in December 2019, but it also managed to reach its deeper-cut target for Q1 2020 a month earlier than planned, the monthly S&P Global Platts survey showed. The achievement may not look that remarkable if one considers that, as usual, not all cartel members respected their December—looser—quotas, and that OPEC’s largest producer and de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, still did the heavy lifting and compensated for the cheating of some other producers. As in all previous months,…