US shale oil production: American manipulation
Now in the world of black fuel there are not just significant changes in the market leaders, but even a kind of revolution. Thus, according to the statement of the head of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy, Khalid Al Falih, OPEC+ countries are close to fulfilling the deal to limit oil production by 90%. At the same time, there are fierce disputes in the United States over the NOPEC bill, which may give American courts the power to consider antitrust claims against OPEC countries and other states involved in “cartel collusion” on the oil market. One does not need to be a market expert to understand that this legislative initiative is primarily aimed at Russia. As mentioned above, modern analysts are beginning to understand that OPEC+ countries have already lost their influence on oil price formation. Now all the power is concentrated on Iranian and Venezuelan oil supplies because of the American sanctions.
First of all, it is necessary to emphasize a well-known truth: the global oil market has long been speculative and hopelessly so. Most of the transactions take place on paper without oil, as such. But their volume directly depends on the amount of dollars in the market. The beneficiary and regulator of all this history is also obvious – this is the Federal Reserve of the USA.
US shale oil production: leverage
According to Rosneft Vice-President Mikhail Leontiev, the Federal Reserve has been carefully manipulating the market lately. Overseas specialists took money from the oil market into American securities and the dollar itself, which caused both the fall in fuel prices and the strengthening of their currency, which only became more profitable.
According to Mikhail Khazin, a well-known economist, another important lever of pressure from the U.S. is sanctions, as it is the United States that has control over world prices. And at the same time, according to the expert, America is not tired of using its power, pushing on Iran or Venezuela.
Besides, as the majority of experts assure, another important factor of the US influence is the hybrid information war, where the distracting figure is OPEC. Thus, OPEC representatives say that the organization has exceeded the plan to reduce production under the OPEC+ agreement. However, an elementary analysis allows us to assert that the overfulfillment of the plan was achieved due to a sharp drop in oil supplies from Iran and Venezuela, where production is falling due to the U.S. sanctions pressure.
It is worth noting the paradoxical fact that at the moment Russia takes a controversial position with regard to OPEC. Thus, the country participates in the OPEC+ agreement, however, as experts assure, not everything is going so smoothly within the group and Russia has been stating this openly recently.
