In its March Oil Market Report , OPEC revised up its forecast of non-OPEC supply for 2018 by 280,000 bpd, a major revision. That equates to year-on-year growth of 1.66 million barrels per day (mb/d). The group couched the change in boring technical jargon, noting that “the upward revision is mainly due to higher-than-expected output in 1Q18 by 360 tb/d in OECD (Americas and Europe), FSU and China.” But make no mistake, OPEC is conceding that U.S. shale is surging, which complicates the cartel’s calculations for rebalancing the oil market. Crucially, the forecast now acknowledges that oil supply will outpace demand this year, a conclusion that the IEA had been predicting for a few months. The trend is worrying for OPEC. The effects of the production cuts of 1.2 mb/d (plus nearly 0.6 mb/d from Russia and other minor partners) had little effect in early 2017, likely because of […]