Summit Notebook

Note to OPEC: Siberia not Saudi

   An episodic courtship between Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter and its sometime rivals in the OPEC group of oil exporting nations, went cold at the beginning of this year when Russia failed to make good on hints that it might cut output in line with OPEC, dominated by Saudi Arabia and other desert states of the Middle East.     Prices for oil, the economic lifeblood of Russia and OPEC countries alike, had fallen below $40, OPEC argued, and supply cuts had to be made to boost prices and finance investment into the oil industry.     Alexander Medvedev, deputy chief executive of Russian energy giant Gazprom, told this year’s Reuters Russia Investment Summit that Russia had an excuse for avoiding the multimillion barrel cuts imposed by OPEC: the Siberian chill .    “It is a very simple explanation for this: We are not in a desert where it’s easily to regulate, we are in an extreme situation in Siberia where reserves could be damaged if you up and down your production levels.”     If Russia shuts down Siberian wells, its industry members argue, they could seize up forever as they go cold.     And Russia hardly left OPEC hanging, Medvedev argued: The financial crisis took its toll even on Russia’s cash rich oil companies: “Actually the supply was substantially lower in the first half of the year.”       Medvedev also said he was still struggling to understand where from the rival Nabucco pipeline will get its gas to rival Gazprom on European markets.      “Even at the (Nabucco) signing ceremony I looked at the photos and tried to find any gas supplier and with all my attempts I could not find any. And it looked strange.”

No more green shoots, but lots of bottoms

From the start, “green shoots of recovery” was not necessarily the British government’s wisest choice of words and after a few months of being on everyone’s lips, has given way to a more lowly metaphor.
Business Minister Baroness Vadera raised the hackles of the political opposition in January when she spotted “a few green shoots” on a day of large-scale job losses and collapsing share prices.
Evidence of economic revival is still elusive, but there are ever louder hints that we have at least seen the worst — or bottomed, to use the mot du jour.
Bottom as a noun and a verb was widely brandished by speakers attending Reuters Global Energy Summit this week, who based on their analysis on a slight increase in available credit, a tentative pick up in energy demand and rising commodity prices.
OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri has an interest in spotting the kind of confidence that has driven oil prices up from a low below $35 a barrel in December to almost double that.
“I have no doubt that the recession has bottomed out, but is it a V shape or a U shape?” he asked during a Reuters summit session.
Others were less convinced and the most bearish of them all was a representative of the very oversupplied tanker market, where freight rates have sunk to their lowest levels in decades, with not a green shoot in sight.
“We have seen lower than the bottom,” said Erik Ranheim, a manager at oil tanker association Intertanko.

OPEC’s special relationship with the U.S.

The United States may fondly dream of independence from imported oil, but it would do well to remember that the traffic is not one way.
OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri told the Reuters Global Energy Summit he had been hearing for years that the world’s biggest oil consumer was seeking ways to avoid importing OPEC oil, but he was confident it would carry on burning fossil fuel for years to come.
“I am of an age when I can tell you I have been hearing this for the last 40 years,” Badri said. “We will see another president, with two terms, before we see any change.”
He also warned the U.S. it should be careful what it wished for.
“We would like to tell them they buy most of the resources of our member countries. We are sending them back more than 50 percent of that income to OECD countries, and the U.S. is one of them, to buy medicine, equipment, aeroplanes, spare parts, clothes.”
“Don’t forget the medicine,” he added.