It is reported that OPEC has recently upgraded their forecast for the future production of crude oil on Russia. This is confirmed by the recent OPEC report released on November 11th.
Back in October, OPEC expected Russia to sustain its oil production slightly over 11 million barrels a day in 2016 and 2017, 11,04 million barrels a day, to be more exact. This time, the cartel improved the expectations up to 11,05 million barrels a day and 11,06 million barrels a day for 2016 and 2017 respectively.
At the same time, they expect Russia to produces the biggest amount of crude oil in Q1 2017. Over the period, Russia is expected to produce 11,12 million barrels a day. In Q3 2017, the production is expected to shrink down 11,0 to million barrels a day.
It should be noted that around 2 p.m. on November 11th, Brent oil futures traded around $45,1 per barrel, which is 1,6% below the close price of the previous trading day. At the same time, WTI oil futures dropped 1,9% all the way down to $43,9 per barrel over the same period.
It should also be noted that on the first day of November, the Russian Ministry of Finance release a report, which indicated the average price of $40,7 per one barrel of Urals crude oil over the period January through October 2016.
For those of you who don’t know, in late October, Russia informed the Middle Eastern oil producers that it was not going to cut its oil production in the near future. The only thing Moscow was ready to do is to freeze the production at the current level.
By the way, in October, OPEC increased its oil production all the way up to the record high 34 million barrels a day despite the recent verbal agreement to cap their production. All in all, the production increased by 170K barrels a day as opposed to September’s production volume.
