The focal point for the oil market in the first week of June was the impending OPEC meeting on the 8th of the month, which was widely expected to yield at the very least a permissible increase in the Organisation’s output, if not an overhaul of the completely out‐of‐date member‐country quota system. In the event, the OPEC meeting was, in the words of the Saudi oil minister, ‘one of the worst meetings we ever had‘, breaking up with no updating of quotas, no pledge to increase production and no communiqué recording for posterity any words of explanation for the failure to do anything constructive. Small wonder that WTI jumped by a couple of Dollars on the news, drifting down subsequently to where it had been just prior to the meeting, as the market began to realise that more oil would be forthcoming from Saudi Arabia after all, despite the shambles in Vienna.
展开▼
