On August 12th, Bloomberg reported a number that should unsettle anyone still reading OPEC+’s monthly quota announcements at face value: Russia’s actual crude output in July was 8.887 million barrels a day, against an OPEC+ quota of 9.824 million. The gap, just under 940,000 barrels a day, is not a compliance choice. Ukraine has hit nine of Russia’s 34 large refineries in August alone, shifted in July to striking tankers in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, and then hit the export terminal at Novorossiysk itself. Russia is not withholding barrels. It cannot move them.
That single data point is the sharpest current illustration of a problem OPEC+’s own ministerial committee put into writing five months ago, and one the market has been slow to price.
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