Launceston — Opec has finally acknowledged what the oil market already knows, namely that rebalancing is taking longer than expected. Perhaps this is because Opec is actually shipping more crude. Oil cartel Opec prefers to talk about output when assessing the impact of the deal among members and 11 allied countries to reduce production by 1.8-million barrels a day. While output is no doubt important, for the immediate market impact it is probably better to focus on what the group is actually exporting. Vessel-tracking and port data in Thomson Reuters Eikon show that for the first five months of 2017, Opec exported 25.6-million barrels a day. This figure is only shipments by tanker and is filtered to show vessels that have already discharged, are discharging or are en route to their destination. The shipments for the first five months of this year are slightly higher than the 25.4-million barrels a day the producer group exported via tankers in the same period in 2016. In May, Opec s...
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