Oil producers may be enjoying oil prices at $65 to $70, but these price levels are likely to encourage even more oversupply from U.S. shale, Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said at an industry event on Friday. For most of 2017, the resurgence of U.S. crude oil production was capping price gains and offset part of the production cuts that OPEC and its Russia-led non-OPEC partners have been implementing since January last year. This year also started with the OPEC vs. shale tug-of-war , although in the first two weeks of 2018, geopolitical risks and declining inventories trumped concerns over the rise in U.S. shale, and supported oil prices and sent Brent briefly breaking above $70 a barrel on Thursday. U.S. shale is expected to continue to counteract OPEC production cuts this year. EIA’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) from earlier this week […]