Still, "there could still be scope for a policy shift at a later date" if the Russia-Ukraine war drags on and the U.S. offers key Middle East members a new security arrangement. We would beg to differ with RBC, and we'd claim that in a market so jittery oil has traded from $98 to $128 to $98 to $121 to $110 in 30 days, expect OPEC+ to do absolutely nothing for a long time.

Meanwhile, separately OPEC predicted that the oil surplus in the first three months of the year was much smaller than the cartel had expected, even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended the market. According to Bloomberg, OPEC analysts slashed their estimates of the first-quarter surplus to 600,000 barrels a day on Tuesday, down from a prediction of about 1 million a day earlier this month. Back in January, the group had projected a glut of 1.4 million a day.

While the committee's deliberations - in preparation for a meeting of OPEC ministers on Thursday - are still ongoing and the figures could be revised, there are plenty of reasons why stockpiles haven't piled up as much as anticipated. On the demand side, consumption has bounced back from the pandemic far more vigorously than predicted, as the easing of restrictions gets drivers back on the road and economic activity generally resumes. At the same time, the supply side has seen a variety of disruptions, from the impact of freezing storms in North America to militia sabotage in Libya. And the OPEC+ alliance itself has struggled to restore production halted during the pandemic.