On Monday, Jeff Currie, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, said OPEC and its allies were likely to achieve their goal of eliminating global oil oversupply next month.

Currie said in an interview with CNBC that OPEC’s production reduction plan had cut crude oil production dramatically from the beginning, while Russia was accelerating its production reduction as Venezuela’s crude oil production declined, and the global crude oil production reduction rate had already been faster than Goldman Sachs expected.

In this regard, he believes that the rebalancing of the crude oil market in April will also force OPEC to lift production restrictions and formulate new plans by May or June.

It is noteworthy that Goldman Sachs also predicted last week that Brent crude oil could rise to $70 to $75 a barrel in the short term, higher than the current price of about $60 a barrel, due to OPEC’s “deterrence” policy and strong oil demand.

In fact, as early as February, Goldman Sachs pointed out that investors’fears about the extent of the collapse of global growth expectations were unfounded and that the scale of production cuts in 2019 had exceeded expectations:

“Core OPEC oil producers are adopting a shocking and awe-inspiring strategy that goes beyond their reduction commitments.”

After oil prices plunged more than 40% at the end of last year, OPEC, composed of 14 oil-producing countries, and its allies, led by Russia, began to balance the market and reached a plan to reduce total daily production by 1.2 million barrels in the first six months of 2019. Among them, 800,000 barrels per day came from OPEC member countries, Russia and 10 OPEC foreign oil-producing countries, with a total reduction of 400,000 barrels per day.

According to the previous OPEC February report, from December last year to January this year, OPEC has achieved the largest reduction in output for two consecutive months, with Saudi Arabia leading in the reduction. Saudi Energy Minister Falh also promised to increase the reduction, suggesting that by March this year, Saudi Arabia’s output will be nearly 500,000 barrels/day lower than the quota.

In mid-April this year, OPEC + will hold a meeting in Vienna to consider whether to extend the agreement until the second half of this year.

But on Monday, Reuters quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that OPEC could not make any decision on oil production policy at its April meeting. It was more likely to make a decision in June, and the most likely decision was to extend OPEC + production cuts until the end of this year.

Russia’s energy minister, Novak, also said that Russia would probably reduce production by up to 228,000 barrels a day by March, with an average reduction in oil production in March exceeding February.

However, Fu Peng, a columnist of Wall Street News, points out that the game between non-OPEC and OPEC is now involved. If OPEC is willing to cut production to maintain oil prices, everyone will benefit from high oil prices; but if it continues to hold up prices, it will be equivalent to OPEC to give up a larger market share, of which Saudi Arabia’s interests will surely suffer the greatest damage.