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OPEC enters uncharted waters during COVID-19 recovery

16 July 2020
Dan Ackermann

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+) coalition is entering the next phase of fraught market-management efforts that have repercussions for the battered U.S. oil industry.

Driving the news: The group yesterday agreed to press ahead with plans to begin increasing output as demand haltingly recovers.

  • The coalition of OPEC+ and Russia — among other producers — will ease their joint curbs by roughly 2 million barrels per day starting next month.
  • It hews to a deal struck in April, as COVID-19 shattered demand, to cut 10 million barrels daily from the market for three months before beginning to relax the curbs.

Why it matters: The oil sector is in uncharted waters amid uncertainty over the recovery from unprecedented demand loss and the severity of the COVID-19's trajectory.

  • "Oil market balance is progressively improving … But risks and uncertainties are huge, be they related to the pandemic or to the economic consequences," Algerian energy minister Abdelmadjid Attar said at yesterday's meeting, per the Associated Press.

What they're saying: KPMG analyst Regina Mayor said OPEC+ faces a delicate task amid its members' competition with U.S. producers, whose output is very price-sensitive.

  • "OPEC+ will have to work hard to ‘thread the needle’ to allow slight increases in production without unleashing U.S activity. Basically, this will be a classic case of how to boil the frog without it jumping out of the pot," Mayor said.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.