Newsgroup: it.economia.borsa
Titolo: Opec aumenta produzione...

By NEELA BANERJEE
Nytimes-11.15.2002
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia,
has sharply increased oil production over the last month to damp high oil
prices, which threaten the weak economic recovery and could spike if the
United States attacks Iraq, industry and Middle East experts said yesterday.
OPEC, which accounts for about one-third of the world's oil supply, has
reduced exports several times this year, at least on paper, to 21.7 million
barrels a day. Oil prices have fallen recently, but for most of the year
have remained fairly high, averaging about $25 a barrel. OPEC members have
been cashing in by producing far above their official quotas.
A recent survey of OPEC and oil industry officials by Platts, an industry
newsletter, indicated that OPEC's 10 voting members produced 24.48 million
barrels a day in October, an increase of 520,000 barrels a day from
September. Iraq, which belongs to OPEC but whose production quotas are set
under United Nations sanctions, also increased its output, by about 500,000
barrels a day. All told, more than one million additional barrels a day of
oil flowed into global markets at a time when demand was still fairly
anemic.
The price of crude oil for December delivery closed at $25.29 a barrel on
the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday, up 10 cents from the day before.
Over the last month, the price of oil for December delivery has declined
$4.68 a barrel, or 15.6 percent.
The most obvious explanation for OPEC's barely veiled cheating is that the
market has been able to absorb it, keeping prices high. "They were making
quite a bit of money without weakening the price until recently," said
Leonidas P. Drollas, chief economist for the Center for Global Energy
Studies, a London consulting and research firm. "They have been
overproducing all year, and they just got greedier."
Many oil traders expect prices to fall even more in the near future because
they think the rampant overproduction at OPEC signals the end of the
cohesion that permitted the group to manage oil markets over the last three
years and keep prices between $20 and $30 a barrel, said George Beranek,
manager of market analysis for the Petroleum Finance Company, a Washington
consulting firm.
But Mr. Beranek and other industry analysts said they thought that OPEC's
overproduction was, in fact, an example of fairly effective, hands-on market
management. The evidence, the analysts said, is that the members have
maintained their percentage of output, as established by the official
quotas, even as they overproduced, indicating that the increase was
coordinated rather than ad hoc.
Most countries are producing about 10 percent more than their quotas,
industry experts said. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, has
increased its output the greatest in absolute terms, by more than 800,000
barrels a day above its quota of 7.053 million barrels. The move may be
consistent with the Saudi tradition of keeping oil markets well supplied
whenever conflict has loomed in the Middle East, said Edward L. Morse,
executive adviser at the Hess Energy Trading Company.
OPEC recognized that inventories of oil in many consuming countries,
particularly the United States, were ebbing toward the low end of normal.
Then a string of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico in late September and
early October shut production at oil wells there, taking 630,000 barrels a
day out of the market for about a month. Add to this fears that a war in
Iraq would touch off disruptions in the supply of oil from the Middle East,
and oil prices rose in mid-September to about $30 a barrel, a level most of
OPEC considered uncomfortably high, industry experts said.
"Given the economic situation and that we're probably heading toward a
conflict in the Middle East, OPEC wanted to get the base price of oil down
so it wouldn't spike so high if war broke out," said one European oil
analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

 Nytimes-11.15.2002
[..]
Si l' Opec sta scartellando pesantemente da almeno 2 mesi, ma lo sta facendo
con un obiettivo quello di evitare strappi sul mercato, il cartello non puň
riunirsi e aumentare ufficialmente le quote, l' Arabia e gli altri paesi
Arabi non avrebbero piů scuse farebbero la figura dei fiancheggiatori di
Bush, perciň preferiscono aumentare la produzione in maniera non ufficiale,
comunque nonostante sti grandi aumenti della produzione Opec le scorte
commerciali Usa continuano a calare, gli analisti prevedevano un aumento di
2 milioni di barili invece il dato settimana scorsa č stato di -7,2, e i
guai dell' Oleodotto dell' Alaska non spiegano il problema, vsito che sono
stati prodotti solo 4 milioni di barili in meno!
Circa l' iraq la produzione di 3 milioni di barili č un illusione, l' iraq
arriva a stento ai 2,2 e a 1,7 per l' export:
Tre settimane fa l' iraq ha potuto esportare a quei ritmi perchč le
settimane prima si discuteva per l' oil for food e dunque l' Iraq non ha
esportato, ma ha stoccato petrolio che passata la risoluzione oil for food e
ritornato sul mercato aggiungendosi alla produzione