The oil production cuts and healthy oil demand growth have helped the global inventory surplus to nearly vanish and it certainly looks very much like OPEC and allies have a “mission accomplished” within reach. That’s the verdict of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which said last week that OECD crude oil stocks at end-February were just 30 million barrels above the five-year average—with product stocks actually below it—compared to a glut of more than 300 million barrels at the start of the production cut agreement that OPEC and Russia-led non-OPEC partners have been implementing since January 2017. Today, a leaked OPEC/NOPEC report suggested that the lingering overhang was even smaller—at 12 million barrels above the five-year average. Still, there are no signs that OPEC and friends would be rushing to declare ‘mission accomplished’. Even the usual OPEC/Russia chatter of ‘gradual exit’ from the cuts once they expire at end-2018 […]