In its just released latest market report for the month of July, OPEC admitted it has a problem: more than six months after the Vienna deal that was supposed to bring supply and demand in balance, the oil cartel confirmed it is pumping too much, not only in 2017, but that it was also set to produce too much oil in 2018, blaming shale production as the primary reason behind the oversupply. First, looking at historical data, according to secondary sources, production among the 14 OPEC member states rose by a whopping +394k b/d in June to 32.611mb/d. The biggest monthly increases took place in those nations that had previously been supply constrained and which are exempt from the output cut accord: Libya +127k b/d, and Nigeria +97k, although even Saudi Arabia saw a substantial pick up in production, which rose by +51k b/d m/m to 9.95m b/d, the […]