6 oil experts explain why OPEC's record-setting production cut will fail to stop prices from plummeting - and lay out what's ahead for the struggling industry

• A coalition of oil-producing countries known as OPEC Plus has reached a historic deal to cut production by 9.7 million barrels per day.
• The cut is about 4 times greater than the last record, and will help stabilize the oil markets in the weeks to come.
• But research by leading Wall Street banks and institutions suggests the cuts will be insufficient to overcome the unprecedented demand destruction driven by the coronavirus.
• Storage tanks are still at risk of filling up, and oil and gas companies will have to shut in wells and lay off staff.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A coalition of oil-producing nations known as OPEC Plus made history on Sunday when it reached a deal to curb oil supply by 9.7 million barrels per day, dwarfing all previous cuts.

It was a remarkable response to a collapse in demand linked to the coronavirus pandemic, which has stunted transportation. The number of air travelers, for example, is just 5% of what it was a year ago, according to a report by Morgan Stanley on Monday.

So what happens next?

The OPEC Plus deal - shouldered in large part by top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia - will prevent oil prices from freefalling, according to reports from several industry analysts.

But many of them say it doesn't go far enough and acknowledge some serious caveats.

"This is clearly the largest production cut ever - and will be in real terms," Greg Priddy, director of global energy and the Middle East at Stratfor, told Business Insider. "But it's also the largest demand destruction that we've seen in modern times."

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Production cuts on paper don't always translate

The OPEC Plus alliance agreed to cut production by a record 9.7 million barrels a day (bpd), or about 10% of global supply, in May and June, after which the cuts gradually step down.

That amounts to most OPEC Plus countries slashing production by 23% in the near-term.

The US, Canada, and Brazil, which are not part of OPEC Plus, may also cut production by about 3.7 million bpd, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Damien Courvalin said in a note on Sunday. These cuts are unlikely to be through a voluntary agreement, but rather via "market forces" - namely, low oil prices - that make it economical to reduce supply, Courvalin said.

The unknown is whether all of these countries will actually make the cuts to which they've agreed.

Courvalin said he assumed full compliance from core OPEC members and 50% from all other participants in May, when the cuts are slated to begin. That means the OPEC Plus deal would lead to an actual cut of only 4.3 million bpd, relative to production in the first three months of the year, he said.

Bank of America strategists were slightly more optimistic. In a note on Monday, they said the actual production cut would be more like 7.2 million bpd over the first few months, relative to February.

Whatever the number is, analysts are anticipating that it will fall short of the agreed-upon 9.7 million barrels.

According to Priddy, that's because some of the countries will have a hard time making the cuts. Iraq, for example, agreed to cut production by 1 million bpd, yet the country owes cost-recovery payments to foreign companies that are helping them raise production, he said.

"That presents them with a big dilemma," he said. "Their finances are getting hit, but they also have contracts that obligate them to pay those companies."

Even with production cuts, storage will fill up fast

Whether or not they're realized, production cuts on the scale of 10 million bpd are simply dwarfed by the collapse in demand.

Estimates vary, but banks like Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs expect oil demand for April to take a hit on the order of more than 20 million barrels per day, relative to last year.

That stunning loss of demand means a lot of oil has nowhere to go. And the OPEC Plus cut won't stop the threat of storage tanks filling up sometime before June, analysts at Credit Suisse wrote in a report on Monday.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley had a similar outlook.

"While this helps moderate storage builds," they wrote of the OPEC Plus deal, "the market should remain oversupplied given the sheer magnitude of lost demand from the COVID-19 pandemic."

They added that the US is on pace to fill storage in about two months.

Meanwhile, Courvalin's team said that the agreement is "too little and too late to avoid breaching storage capacity" and that no voluntary cuts "could be large enough to offset" the demand collapse in April and May.

What it means for the oil and gas industry

The price of oil will fall - at least, that's one of the takeaways from a handful of reports on Monday.

Brent crude futures, an international benchmark, could drop below $20 a barrel in the near term, according to Morgan Stanley. They started the year closer to $70.

"The global oil market will have the largest spare capacity in at least a decade, leading to a flatter Brent crude oil curve," Bank of America analysts wrote. "As the dust settles, it could also potentially leave oil prices lower for longer."

A consequence of low oil prices is that companies shut-in wells - in other words, they turn off the tap. Really cheap oil can mean that some wells aren't economical anymore, even if shutting them down can cause permanent damage to the supply.

Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that about 2 million barrels of oil will be shut in as a result of the pandemic.

"Producers have already begun to announce shut-ins, and we expect more will follow," the bank's analysts wrote.

Indeed, the oil giant Continental Resources has already announced that it's curbing production by 30% for April and May, they said.

It's these market-driven cuts to production in the US that will likely help rebalance the market - but not before companies slash their capital spending and lay off staff to adjust to those changes.

"There are still going to be a lot of layoffs in the shale patch," Priddy said. "This is still something that is going to hammer the industry."

Business Insider has been tracking how 18 of the top oil and gas companies are responding to the price of oil. A handful of them has already laid off staff - including Apache and Halliburton - while nearly all of them have slashed billions from their 2020 spending.

What analysts are watching

This week, the International Energy Agency is set to announce how much oil countries are purchasing for their strategic reserves. That could buoy the price by effectively taking oil out of the market.

G20 countries outside of the OPEC Plus alliance, such as the US, could also possibly pledge to curb production, beyond market-driven cuts.

If "indications that G20 will join in with more cuts of up to an additional 10 million bpd prove true and take an official character, then we can expect a relative price recovery," Rystad Energy, a research firm, said in a statement on Monday.

But the most important metric to look at is demand, the analysts say, which is what's dragging down the price. And until it starts to bounce back, the price of oil and the industry that depends on it is unlikely to fully recover.