Oil Price, Mean Reversion and Zone Readjustments

Abstract

Observing OPEC`s short-term price-output ceiling behavior during the late 1980s and 1990s, one can conclude that it attempts to stabilize the market price within a range of its announced target price by controlling the output ceiling. If the price moves within four to five dollars below the target price, it usually reduces the output ceiling and assigns new quotas to its member countries to keep the price close to the target price. In reality, OPEC established a band for the market price positioned round the target price by basically choosing suitable upper and lower limits for the output or, at least in soft markets, it places tolerance zone below the target price in order to restrict the discrepancy between the market price and the target price. The lower limit is particularly needed because it sets a price floor and ensures that the market price stays above the significantly lower marginal cost of oil production. If the limits of these zones are backed by a perfectly credible intervention policy, they can generate an expectations process that should turn the market prices around even before any intervention takes place. While OPEC in some sense observes the target zones for its prices, thosemore » zones are neither well defined nor vigorously defended. It can not always or may not be willing to maintain the price within the limits of the desired zone by cutting the output ceiling; it must sometimes readjust the target price and output ceiling, and thus create a new target zone to reflect the market`s new fundamentals. This is particularly true now because OPEC is losing market share to the other oil producers and is contemplating to shift the current band. Actual readjustments in the target price can be so large, as in 1980 and 1985, that the newmarket price must jump as well. They can occur when both the market price is near the limits of the band as well as when it is inside the band but still further away from those limits.« less