London — When oil cartel Opec and its allies unveiled their plan last year to re-balance world oil markets, prices rallied and most analysts expected the supply cuts would succeed. With the strategy now faltering, one bank that predicted failure says the group should call it quits. There’s been a wave of price-forecast downgrades over the past month as analysts from Goldman Sachs to Bank of America and Citigroup acknowledged that Opec’s production curbs haven’t cleared a global glut. One forecaster who has kept his outlook unchanged is Commerzbank’s Frankfurt-based head of commodities research, Eugen Weinberg, who never believed the cuts would work in the first place. "Opec’s strategy was doomed from the very beginning," Weinberg said. "It’s all about shale and the sooner they recognise that the better." Last December, when most banks were projecting the group’s intervention would send oil rallying toward $60 a barrel or higher by the end of 2017, Commerzbank anticipated a slide to ...
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