WITH apologies to Rene Descartes, to know what The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies (Opec+) really thinks, pay attention to what it does rather than what it says.
Despite warnings that it may pause - or even reverse - its campaign of production hikes, the cartel has pushed ahead with output increases in the face of a weakening oil market.
Current prices, in the mid-US$60s a barrel, aren't low enough to prompt Opec+ to pivot.
My gut feeling is that to meet the cartel's pain threshold, Brent crude, the global benchmark, would have to drop into the low US$50s - equivalent to the US oil yardstick West Texas Intermediate dropping into the high US$40s - for an extended period before Saudi Arabia takes the first steps to changing its stance.
Although US sanctions on Russian giant energy companies Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJCS have jolted the industry, pushing Brent above US$65 a barrel last week, the oil market remains oversupplied going into 2026.
The industry is debating the magnitude of the glut, but few disagree that oil supply will run well ahead of demand from now until at least the middle of next year.
Granted, American sanctions can reduce the size of the glut by forcing Russia to cut output, but only if Washington is willing to enforce its threatened penalties; history suggests the White House is very reluctant to do that.
Rosneft and Lukoil together account for about three million barrels a day of Russian crude exports, slightly more 60% of the country's total, according to data from consultant Rystad Energy.
Exports risk
Some of those exports may be at risk as Indian and Russian refiners need time to find workarounds; perhaps 500,000 barrels a day could be disrupted for a few weeks.
But the experience of previous sanctions, implemented in the final days of the Biden administration and targeting smaller Russian oil companies Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas, shows that their impact diminishes over time.
Importantly, the Kremlin has demonstrated its mastery of the oil market's dark arts, finding outlets for its sanctioned barrels via discounts, shadowy middlemen and the use of its own fleet of oil tankers.
China, too, has shown appetite to prop up Moscow by buying Russian crude.
Call me cynical or pessimistic, but I've been around long enough to know that crude always find a way to flow.
With the value of all barrels under US sanctions approaching US$800mil a day, the risk-reward ratio is skewed in favour of rulebreakers.
Need an example? Iranian crude oil exports last month hit a seven-year high.
That's with Donald Trump in the White House, after America bombing Tehran's nuclear sites and the US Treasury announcing it had "dismantled" key elements of the country's "energy export machine."
If, as I expect, the latest round of US sanctions doesn't result in a significant drop in Russian oil production, global inventories will increase, perhaps sharply, during the first half of next year.
In 2025, Chinese stockpiling has absorbed the surplus, but that won't be enough to absorb next year's oversupply.
In its own words, the cartel has adopted "a cautious approach" to production and retains "full flexibility to pause or reverse" its two-year long campaign of output hikes.
I reckon Saudi Arabia is keen to establish a high output baseline, probably as high as 10.5 million barrels a day compared with 10 million currently, that would serve as a benchmark for any future discussion about cuts.
By boosting output quotas, the kingdom is also forcing others within Opec+ to prove they can pump in reality what they claim in theory.
In any case, cheaper crude prices are needed to convince Saudi Arabia that the market is loosening up.
That would also inflict sufficient financial pain among the cartel's members to shoulder their share of any cuts; Riyadh is tired of allies such as the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kazakhstan regularly cheating on their Opec+ commitments by pumping more than their official quotas.
The oil cartel faces another restraint in 2026 if it changes tack: Trump.
With American mid-term elections in just over a year, the president will pressurise Riyadh to keep oil prices low, so he can sell cheap petrol as a political victory.
If there is a pivot to cut production next year, expect a barrage of social media posts bemoaning the move. -- Bloomberg
Javier Blas is a Bloomberg opinion columnist. The views expressed here are the writer's own.