Fatih Birol Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, expects oil’s fundamentals to regain balance soon, thanks to the output cut deal agreed by OPEC last week. His opinion goes counter to observers who suspect OPEC members are likely to cheat in their compliance with new output targets, including Saudi Arabia’s former Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi. Speaking to Reuters, Birol reiterated IEA’s earlier forecast that supply and demand for crude oil were unlikely to rebalance until the end of 2017 but added that now, with OPEC’s agreement, this could happen much sooner. In early November, the international authority warned in its monthly Oil Market Report that unless OPEC cut production soon, the world will continue to choke on oil. The figures that IEA cited in the report had OPEC production at 33.83 million bpd in October, up by 230,000 bpd from the previous month. As per […]