Strong words need to be followed by strong actions otherwise they simply discredit the speaker in the future. Khalid al-Falih the Saudi Energy minster, and Alexander Novak his Russian counterpart, pledged in Beijing to do “Whatever it takes” to reduce the global glut in oil products inventory. However, unfortunately for Russia and OPEC, at this point changing the direction of the oil markets will require more than just a catchy headline.

In a show of solidarity highlighting their mutual interest in raising oil prices Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to continue the OPEC production cuts of 1.2 MMbbls agreed upon last year through Q1 of 2018. This makes the OPEC meeting later this month on May 25 nearly a formality as they are almost certain to go along. This may make for good press and indeed oil futures across the board saw a nice bounce upon the news, but the Saudis and the Russians have a problem. Basic math demonstrates that this extension is just not enough to bring inventory levels back to where they wish.

The first problem is excess supply brought on by players across the world unaffected by the OPEC cuts. Over the weekend Libya, the sleeping giant of African oil production which is exempted from the OPEC production cuts, showed signs of stirring with its announcement that it was pumping 814,000 barrels a day. This announcement was no surprise after last month two major oil fields came back online when an agreement was reached with protesters who had shutdown production.  Libya’s Shara and El Feel oil fields which are capable of producing nearly 400,000 bpd coming back online nearly doubled the troubled nations capacity to produce oil.

While this represents a massive increase from just weeks ago when at the end of April Libya was pumping just 700,000 bpd, it may just be the beginning. Prior to the political turmoil of the Arab Spring uprisings Libya had been producing as many as 1.6 million bpd. It seems Libya’s current leadership recalls these days and hopes to see them again as the country has a production goal of 1.32 bpd by the end of this year.

If this realistic goal is met than it would be a rise of 800,000 bpd compared to the less than 500,000 bpd which Libya had been producing earlier this year. This increase would offset more than 2/3s of the planned cuts which OPEC and Russia hope will bring the market back to what they consider acceptable levels.