Opec supply buffer shrinks as it heeds call to pump more crude oil

Those reserves will shrink as the group implements the 1 million-barrel-a-day supply boost pledged in Vienna last week

OPEC is heeding consumers’ calls to pump more crude, but that’s only making the oil market more nervous.

The fleeting reassurance that came from Saudi Arabia’s pledge last week to lead a substantial production increase was swept away on Tuesday as tougher U.S. sanctions on Iran shifted focus back to the world’s dwindling buffer of emergency crude supply.

“The reduction in spare capacity by OPEC” leaves “pricing risk more exposed to the upside,” said Brian Singer, managing director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Idle oil fields that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies -- predominantly Saudi Arabia