Oil consumers are threatening to take control of the market with a massive release of emergency crude stockpiles, while OPEC+ refuses to engage with the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The contrast between events on Wednesday couldn’t be starker.

A meeting of OPEC+ experts concluded with a decision to exclude data provided by the International Energy Agency from their crude-production estimates -- a minor technical change intended mainly as a public snub to the agency that represents the interests of oil consumers. 

A few hours later, Bloomberg News reported that the Biden administration is weighing a plan to release roughly 1 million barrels of oil a day from U.S. reserves for several months -- an unprecedented move that sent crude futures tumbling as much 6.8 per cent in New York. 

Consumers are taking matters into their own hands because the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies are resisting being drawn into the political crisis caused by the military aggression of Russia -- one of the cartel’s leading members. 

OPEC+ hurried through its meeting earlier this month in just 13 minutes without discussing the issue that was dominating global commodities markets. At the ministerial gathering scheduled for later today, the cartel is once again expected to stick to its schedule of gradual oil-output increases. 

That plan was agreed in July last year, before the start of the ever-worsening energy crisis, and has been followed doggedly ever since.