The latest OPEC decision will see emergence of lesser known oil and gas producers and skew the market to bring down prices again, say industry experts.

Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, said that the recently announced production curbs by OPEC countries may lead to hike of crude oil price.

“The price of crude oil has surged above $50/bbl and is expected to go up further due to OPEC production freeze,” he pointed out.

But, industry trackers believe that pricing may not be the only outcome of this decision. According to Boston Consultant Group (BCG), there are three probable scenarios -- Sustained Pain, Cyclical Recovery, and a Fast-paced rebound.

In a presentation titled Oil Price Volatility, BCG said the first and worst for upstream industry would be the ‘sustained pain’ scenario, where “oil prices stay around or below $50/bbl for the mid-term.

This would be the case if current prices are established as a mid-term new normal and on the supply side OPEC continues its ‘pump at will’ strategy or relaxes it at a slow pace, with their expansion plans continuing uninterrupted.”

In the second scenario -- Cyclical recovery -- where prices undergo a slow, sustained recovery to $60/bbl to $70/bbl.

The firm assess that this scenario is one where the market recovers over 1-2 years, but to lower levels than recent years.

The third and most ideal solution, according to BCG for upstream oil industry majors, is where prices experience a rapid recovery to the $70/bbl to $90/bbl level.

This would be enabled if a uniformly adopted OPEC quota cut is not countered by US shale. This would be accentuated by a heighted Chinese and Indian thirst for crude oil.

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