For those of you who don’t know, OPEC and other non-OPEC oil nations, led Russia, planned a standalone oil summit in Vienna for today, November 28th. However, the summit was canceled after Saudi Arabia, representing OPEC, decided not to participate in the talks.
According to several sources, OPEC decided to hold an internal preliminary meeting instead. This means that Russia and the cartel are not going to have talks on the current situation and the future of the global oil market a couple of days in advance of the OPEC summit in Vienna, which is going to decide the near-term fate of oil prices.
To be more specific, Saudi Arabia is said to want OPEC to discuss the situation with other oil nations only after all the OPEC nations settle their disputes with each other. The problem is that while OPEC members are ready to cut or at least freeze their oil production, Iran is determined to reach the pre-sanction oil production level no matter what. At the same time, Iraq says they need to boost production due to the current war on the ICIS.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia informed everyone that they wouldn’t be present at the non-OPEC summit today, which means there is no point in holding this summit at all. Earlier today, Russia also gave everyone to understand that Russian representatives wouldn’t go to Vienna for the planned summit for obvious reasons. A couple of hours later, Russian Minister of Energy Alexander Novak said that Russia would support OPEC’s decision to cut oil production if OPEC members found consensus inside of the cartel.
The final decision will be made on November 30th, during the forthcoming OPEC summit in Vienna.
