OPEC Cuts Set To Exempt Nigeria, Libya; Iraq Says It’s ‘Special’

In the United States market, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures settled down US7 cents, or 0.2 per cent, to $US47.96 a barrel.

Brent for January settlement fell as much as 30 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $48.82 a barrel, on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.

Three OPEC sources told reporters that a gathering of experts from the oil producer group in Vienna on Tuesday made a decision to recommend that a ministerial meeting on Wednesday next week debate a proposal from member Algeria to reduce output by that amount.

IEA Director Fatih Birol told Reuters in Tokyo on Thursday that even if production is cut, prices could soon come back under downward pressure again as the OPEC-led cut would enable USA shale oil drillers to massively increase their own output. OPEC members had been insistent for Russian Federation to partake the cut in order to establish a collective agreement. OPEC experts were reported to make some progress on the first day of a two-day meeting, but uncertainty coming from of Iran, Iraq and Indonesia about the level of their participation bolstered problematical character of the deal.

An agreement to cut oil production within OPEC countries would reduce the current numbers by more than one million barrels per day.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Abadi’s comments are the clearest indication so far that Baghdad will support an Opec plan to cut production by 4-4.5 percent when it meets on November 30 in Vienna. He said they estimate that this production surplus will reach a million per day by the end of 2016.

Oil has remained volatile amid speculation that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries may fail to implement the output cuts first outlined in September. Benchmark Brent crude, which has more than halved since mid-2014, was little changed at $48.97 a barrel as of 12:49 p.m.in Singapore on Thursday. This development supported oil prices, as markets were actually expecting a build-up of 671,000 barrels.

Oil has rebounded from an eight-week low on November 14 as members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries make renewed diplomatic efforts before their November 30 meeting to finalize the supply deal they agreed to informally in September. Reportedly, Indonesia also has made statements regarding their sentiments and reservations regarding an oil production cut.

“We think we should increase output”.

But OPEC’s 14 members have been at odds over the plan, which aims to cut output by up to 750,000 million mb/d to between 32.5 and 33 mb/d.