OPEC+ compliance rose sharply in June, helping to tighten up the market. The improved compliance also boosted confidence and cohesion in the group’s collective effort ahead of a possible loosening of the supply curtailments. Perhaps counterintuitively, that increases the odds that the group increases production beginning in August. Saudi Arabia praised the efforts of Iraq and Nigeria for their stricter compliance with the production cuts in June, which comes just a few weeks after Riyadh cast blame on the countries for over-producing relative to their commitments, even going as far as threatening a new price war (a threat that most analysts did not interpret as likely). The “historic cooperation between OPEC Member Countries and non-OPEC countries…have helped the global oil market, and hence the world economy, to overcome recent unprecedented challenges,” OPEC said in its latest Oil Market Report. Iraq cut production by roughly 450,000 bpd and Nigeria reduced […]