The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has been marginalized as critical decisions about the oil market are taken by a troika of the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia. The rise and subsequent fall in oil prices this year has been almost entirely driven by production decisions in these three countries and their policies towards managing the impact of renewed sanctions on Iran. The troika accounted for 36 million barrels per day of crude and condensates production in 2017 (39 percent of the global total) compared with just 27 million bpd from the rest of OPEC (30 percent of the global total). Troika production has surged even further this year as U.S. shale firms ramped up output in […]