Covid: OPEC gets chance to gain upper hand in long battle with shale production

Once the global oil market emerges from the coronavirus crisis, it may be greeted by a surprising change: greater dependence on crude from OPEC.

For the time being, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are relinquishing their share of the market in a bid to prop up crude prices, slashing millions of barrels of output as the pandemic crushes fuel demand.

They’d already spent the past three years forsaking sales volumes to offset the oil glut unleashed by burgeoning US shale production. Before the pandemic, forecasters were projecting that the group would need to cut production further in coming years.