Too much oil, too little demand
Marketplace
American Public Media
4.6 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will hold oil production steady next quarter as global supply remains unusually high, driven by record output from the U.S., Brazil, Canada, and Norway. At the same time, demand is low due to a tipsy global economy and rising EV adoption. Also in this episode: What a no-immigration economy may look like, why Zillow removed climate risk information from home listings, and how food companies introduce healthy versions of staple offerings.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | Tap in at Pluralsight.com and see for yourself. |
| 0:31.1 | We begin the last month of 2025 with oil, real estate, and trade. |
| 0:38.6 | Also, the labor market, and Cheetos. |
| 0:42.6 | From American public media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:52.2 | In Los Angeles, I'm Colin Rizzdahl. It is Monday today, the first day of December. |
| 1:00.4 | Good as always to have you along, everybody. There is, perhaps, no industry on this earth as sensitive to the economic realities of supply and demand as crude oil. |
| 1:12.7 | And it turns out we are very much on the supply side of that equation right now. There's plenty of oil sloshing around out there. |
| 1:18.4 | Brent crude stands just below $63 a barrel, West Texas Intermediate, around 59. That is low-ish, |
| 1:26.2 | and it led the organization of petroleum exporting countries and its allies, OPEC Plus, as you might know them, |
| 1:32.2 | to decide this weekend that they are going to hold the amount of oil they pumped to global markets steady for the next few months. |
| 1:38.6 | The cartel has been looking to boost production for a good couple of years now, but again, supply and demand. Marketplaces Henry |
| 1:46.0 | Ep explains why there is so much oil supply right now. There's been this tug of war between |
| 1:51.2 | some members of OPEC Plus, says Mark Finley, a fellow at Rice University. Do they want to have |
| 1:57.0 | higher prices and higher revenues, or do they want to claim market share as the world's |
| 2:03.2 | low-cost suppliers? |
| 2:05.3 | The chasing market share side won out for a while, and OPEC countries pumped more oil, |
| 2:10.2 | but it's hard to keep that up when prices are as low as they are, and prices are low in part |
... |
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