Commodity stocks such as this oil and gas company could be a useful hedge against inflation

Commodity stocks such as this oil and gas company could be a useful hedge against inflation

This column makes no apology for returning to the subject of Shell so quickly after its last look a month ago . That came after May’s bumper first-quarter profits statement and the occasion this time is last weekend’s Opec+ meeting in Vienna. Saudi Arabia’s attempts to bend the oil price to its iron may not be proving entirely successful, but there are still good grounds for thinking the oil price is well underpinned in the $70 to $80 a barrel range, enough for Shell to keep churning out dividends and share buybacks to income-seeking investors (even if climate campaigners and portfolio builders who run strict environmental, social and governance screens may despair). The influence of Opec+ is not as great as investors might believe, given that the members of the oil producers’ cartel and its allies, such as Russia, control less than half of global oil production between them. This may explain why oil traders are hardly running for cover even as Riyadh sanctions a cut in production of one million barrels of oil a day, or 1pc of global output, from July 1 and gets Opec+ to extend the 1.2m barrel a day cut announced in April into 2024.