“’Freeze’ is a word rarely heard in balmy Doha,” says The Wall Street Journal’s Spencer Jakab. But on Saturday 17 April, top oil producers are meeting to discuss freezing their output at current levels. Still, don’t hold your breath. Saudi Arabia has already said that it will only keep output stable if Iran does too, and this is unlikely. Having been frozen out of the market for years as a result of Western sanctions, it is keen to regain market share.
A freeze would make scant difference to the global oversupply of two million barrels per day anyway. That is already being very slowly worked off as US crude inventories have eased from their highest level since the 1930s and shale production falls following a slide in drilling activity. US output has fallen for ten of the past 11 weeks, says America’s Energy Information Administration.
Meanwhile, Iran’s return to the market has been slower than expected. It could take until next year for Iranian exports to reach their full potential. So freeze or no freeze, oil appears to have bottomed and looks set to rise very slowly over the next two years.