Oil Rises a Third Day as OPEC May Fail to Meet 2nd-Half Demand

The extra oil that producers can pump has “decreased to dangerously low levels,” Merrill Lynch & Co. strategist Francisco Blanch said in a report this week. OPEC’s crude-oil production in April rose 0.9 percent to 30.07 million barrels a day, close to a 26-year high, a Bloomberg survey showed. “Asking the Saudis to pump more oil is like asking an athlete who runs at full speed to run faster — the only way he can do it is by taking drugs,” said Gal Luft, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. “Without the necessary infrastructure, the Saudis will be forced to pump huge amounts of water into their wells to increase reservoir pressure. This could devastate the geological formations and lead to many problems down the line.”

Bloomberg