Letter from London: OPEC+ approaching high noon

The oil alliance must navigate the good, the bad and the ugly in its showdown with the market at the beginning of December

A good spaghetti western tends to have an anti-hero with the odds stacked against them. OPEC and its oil-producing allies have been in this predicament many times, from the ravages of Covid-inflicted demand weakness to the market-share eating power of US shale. Movie—and OPEC—watchers know how this story ends. The flexible approach that OPEC+ has shown to managing the market gets its plaudits when oil prices are high and critics when the mood turns bearish. So when the eight OPEC+ members—Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman—that had voluntarily decided in June to keep an additional 2.2m bl off the market agreed to extend that cut from October to Decembe