Gift OPEC

OPEC+ countries on Monday, April 3, announced a voluntary reduction in oil production until the end of 2023 by 1.66 million barrels per day. Russia and Saudi Arabia - half a million barrels per day from the middle level as of February will be most strongly reduced. The rest of the countries - and these are the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria, Gabon and Kazakhstan - will ensure the reduction of the remaining 660 thousand.

This event was an unpleasant surprise for the market. If the Russian reduction was known for a long time, then all other decisions were made last weekend. As a result, the cost of the North Sea mixture of Brent on Monday, with the opening of the auction, took off at once 8 percent and came close to $ 85 per barrel.

Over the past six months, this is the second reduction in the production of OPEC+countries. In October, an agreement was reached on a decrease by 2 million barrels per day.

In the current decision, it makes no sense to look for some kind of political background. It is adopted preventively - on fears that the banking crisis developing in developed countries will turn into a global financial and then economic. What is fraught not only with the collapse of the quotes for everything, including oil, but also a reduction in global demand for raw materials.

For oil exporters, including Russia, this is not the most pleasant trend

In addition, the October reduction of its goals did not achieve. At the end of September, the price of a barrel of Brent dropped below $ 85, and after a decision to reduce production, in about a week increased by 10 with a small dollars. However, it was not possible to "throw" quotes above $ 100 per barrel. Moreover, prices continued to slide, and in March of this year they dropped to 70 dollars. And already at the end of March, the energy strategist JP Morgan Christian Malek in an interview with Bloomberg said that if this line could not resist, quotes can leave much lower than $ 60.

One way or another, you can state that in six months the lower border, beyond which OPEC+ countries begin to react, sank to about $ 15 per barrel. For oil exporters, including Russia, this is not the most pleasant trend. OPEC+ countries are trying to turn off the trend in the falling market.

Since it was about Russia, the news for local oil companies is not the most pleasant. On the one hand, the ceiling of prices continues to act. Moreover, India, which in 2022 broke all records for increasing oil imports from Russia, said that she was not going to pay higher than the “ceiling” for Russian raw materials. So the increase in the cost of Brent can simply increase the discount with which Russian oil is sold to the North Sea.

This can cool both the economy and markets, including oil

On the other hand, since April, Brent has been used to count taxes and fees from oil workers in Russia as a guideline, setting the maximum discount on Russian raw materials. So the income of companies may not grow, and the requisitions in favor of the budget will increase. Accordingly, business profitability may suffer. While the picture looks that way.

On April 3, the Ministry of Finance unveiled its assessment of the average Urals price in March - $ 47.85 per barrel. The Brent discount (the average monthly price for this variety was at 79.1 dollars per barrel) amounted to 39.5 percent. So if oil companies had to switch to a new form of taxes and fees in March, they would have to pay extra.

How effective the current decrease will be is difficult to judge. Many investment banks have increased their forecasts of the average annual oil price. Some analysts admit that the market will respond with another attempt to get closer, and then storm the line at the level of $ 100 per barrel. Others indicate that if hydrocarbons really begin to grow in price and hysterical fluctuations on the exchange will develop into a stable increase in quotations, this will exert additional inflationary pressure on the economies of developed countries, and the increase in rates with leading central banks can accelerate. This can cool both the economy and markets, including oil.

In the meantime, it is obvious that the main beneficiaries will be American manufacturers who did not take any obligations. And we are talking not only about the United States, but also about the rest of the countries of the two continents - from Brazil and Venezuela to Canada. African countries and Europeans who mines the same Brent on the North Sea shelf are also winning. All of them get the opportunity to increase their share in the market without risk to collapse prices.

Europeans have already seriously revised plans for renewable sources

As for consumers, they have an additional incentive to speed up the transition to renewable energy. Europeans, after the shocks of the last two years and so seriously revised plans for renewable sources. At the end of March, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe pre -agreed on new goals for the development of renewable energy in the European Union. If earlier the task was to receive about a third (32 percent) of energy at the expense of the sun and wind by 2030, now the bar has increased to 42 and a half percent. The higher the prices for hydrocarbons rise (if they rise), the easier it will be to support the abandonment of hydrocarbons to promote their ideas.

That's just for Russia all these long -term plans and strategies are not yet interesting. The main thing is that today the prices have risen and among the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov has sharply improved the mood. Because neither he nor his bosses have no 2030. The end of the year, and he sinks in the fog of uncertainty. They live today, however, like the whole of Russia.