The Real Reason Oil Prices Aren’t At $80

The Real Reason Oil Prices Aren’t At $80

The UAE’s awarding last week of a slew of huge drilling contracts aimed at increasing its crude oil output capacity from around 4 million barrels per day (bpd) to 5 million bpd underlines that the principal market risk from an oil trader’s perspective is still skewed towards further supply against a backdrop of an uneven bounce back in demand following the height of the global COVID-19 crisis in 2020. In the short- and medium-term, significant supply increases are likely to come from ongoing failures in the OPEC decision and implementation structure, and in the longer term from a potential flood of new crude from Iran in the official oil markets and increases from non-OPEC crude producers.