neil atkinson from the iea joins us from paris. sir, thank you very much for joining the show our colleague spoke to the head of the opec earlier. he said he had reassurances from russia to keep production cuts in place is it fair to say going forward the u.s. will be the largest swing producer in the foreseeable future when it comes to oil production? >> well, i think most people assume that the opec output cuts, which have been in place since the beginning of 2017 will stay in place for the rest of this year. what we're watching at the moment is because the united states is essentially a free market for oil, it's production rises and falls in line with the oil price. at the moment we're in a situation where oil prices have risen during the second half of 2017 and the early part of this year, that's given confidence to producers that they can drill more, produce more, hedge more, and we're seeing united states production rising dramatically before our eyes. that's likely to continue during 2018 of course looking further beyond tha