“Not that big a deal,” said Rusty Braziel, executive chairman of RBN Energy, another Houston consulting firm. But, he added, “an OPEC Plus cut will definitely impact the market, just by the signal it sends that OPEC Plus stands ready to cut production to keep the price of oil from falling.”Updated Oct. 3, 2022, 5:38 p.m. ETGyrating prices in oil markets have become familiar in recent years.During the 2008-9 financial crisis, prices dropped to $35 a barrel from $145 in only five months. In 2014-15, as economic growth slowed, oil dropped more than 50 percent in nine months, to $45 a barrel. Prices climbed again until the Covid-19 pandemic hit, when demand collapsed. In a matter of hours, they briefly crashed to below zero from $18, as producers were forced to pay buyers to take oil they had no room to store.With their economies at stake, Saudi Arabia and its allies have aimed to stabilize the market as the world slowly recovers from the pandemic. After cutting nearly 10 million barrels a day of production during the pandemic, OPEC Plus gradually restored output until last m …
