OPEC not only continued to cut its crude oil production in December 2019, but it also managed to reach its deeper-cut target for Q1 2020 a month earlier than planned, the monthly S&P Global Platts survey showed . The achievement may not look that remarkable if one considers that, as usual, not all cartel members respected their December—looser—quotas, and that OPEC’s largest producer and de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, still did the heavy lifting and compensated for the cheating of some other producers. As in all previous months, Saudi Arabia overcomplied significantly with its share of the cuts, helping the cartel achieve the new quota effective January a month early. Saudi Arabia’s December oil production was 9.82 million bpd, as per the Platts survey. This is way below the December quota of 10.3 million bpd and even below the new Q1 2020 Saudi quota of 10.14 million bpd. The […]