OPEC and its partners came into their meetings this week in Vienna aiming to show the oil market some muscle; they left with oil prices falling. The 24-country coalition, which controls almost half of the world’s oil production, renewed its 1.2 million b/d supply cut agreement for nine months instead of the previously mooted six, sending “a strong signal to the market that underlines our resolve,” Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said. And a charter to cement the OPEC/non-OPEC alliance was signed with great fanfare, making permanent “one of history’s strongest producer partnerships, spanning the entire world, from east to west, and which has committed itself to promoting market stability on an ongoing basis,” Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih said. Traders were less than impressed, sending oil prices down after Tuesday’s meeting concluded, even before […]