China’s renewing of its oil purchase deals with Iran not only provides a boost to the Islamic Republic’s hopes of re-establishing itself in global markets, it also underscores why this week’s OPEC meeting is largely irrelevant. The market consensus is that Friday’s gathering of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) won’t produce any significant change in the group’s output policy. This is notwithstanding some apparent tentative signals from top producer Saudi Arabia that it may consider cutting output, as long as the rest of OPEC and major non-OPEC countries such as Russia also trim output. While this idea appears stillborn, given Russian opposition, the renewing of an oil purchase agreement between Iran and China is more significant, as it shows why any moves to curtail […]