OPEC overwhelmed by COP21, Oil Supply, Emerging Market growth decline

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting in Vienna last Friday concluded without agreeing to a concrete guidance. Reports reveal that there are three factors overwhelming the OPEC meeting.

According to CNBC, one of the biggest problems that OPEC has to face is the threat of COP21 developing means to make use of stranded hydrocarbon assets. This will render oil and coal unborneable and uninvestable. The structural trends in oil supply is another big challenge that the OPEC has to address. Finally, there is the Chinese economic slowdown, which seems to have also slowed emerging markets' growth.

Investors reported that the uncertainty in the oil production in Iran, Russia, and the U.S., lead to the conclusion of the meeting without bringing up a clear guidance. OPEC members said the organization will maintain the present output levels, but there were no official figures given. Before the meet, the output level was 30 million barrels per day, but the actual output reached 31 million.

In a report by Market Watch, OPEC's unchanged production level will legitimize its 1.5 million barrels per day production that it has output cap of 30 million barrels per day. It seems that OPEC no longer have power to affect oil prices, which are seen by analysts to decline further down.

On COP21's hydrocarbons asset process, the Bank of England governor Mark Carney said this concern had been raised by others. This poses a big threat to long term oil producers and investors. The International Energy Agency expects the cumulative demand for oil to drop to 100 billion barrels in the next few decades. This could mean a potential $22 trillion worth of revenue for producers could never be earned.

OPEC has also underestimated shale, which has not slowed down in production, despite crude oil prices plunging down to half its earlier prices.

With the slowdown of growth among emerging market, these three factors poses the biggest threats to OPEC, which seems to be powerless to turn the tables around.