Investing.com – Crude oil prices declined for a second consecutive day on Tuesday, as investors awaited a highly-anticipated meeting of global oil producers scheduled on Thursday.
The U.S. West Texas Intermediate January contract was down 22 cents or about 0.38% at $57.89 a barrel by 09:50 a.m. ET (13:50 GMT), off Friday’s two-year highs of $59.05.
Elsewhere, for February delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London was down 33 cents or about 0.52% at $63.05 a barrel.
Traders grew more cautious as oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major producing countries were set to meet in Vienna on Thursday to decide whether to extend their current production agreement beyond a March 2018 deadline.
Most market analysts expect the oil cartel to extend output cuts for a further nine months until the end of next year, but the terms were so far unclear, as Russia has sent mixed signals about whether it will back the move.
In November last year, OPEC and 11 other non-OPEC producers, led by Russia, agreed to cut output by about 1.8 million barrels per day between January 1 and June 30. The agreement was extended in May of this year for a period of nine months until March 2018 in a bid to reduce global oil inventories and support oil prices.
The OPEC-led production cuts have been one of the key catalyst supporting the recent rally in oil prices amid expectations that rebalancing in oil markets are well underway.
However, fears that rising U.S. output would dampen OPEC’s efforts to rid the market of excess supplies are prevented prices from rising much further, according to market participants.
Domestic U.S. output has rebounded by almost 15% since the most recent low in mid-2016, and increasing drilling activity for new production means output is expected to grow further, as producers are attracted by climbing prices.
In other news, TransCanada Corp said that from U.S. regulators to restart the Keystone pipeline at reduced pressure on Tuesday.
The decision followed the recent outage of the 590,000 barrel-per-day pipeline, one of Canada’s main crude export routes to the U.S., which had initially pushed oil prices higher.
Elsewhere, were down 1.08% at $1.769 a gallon, while gained 2.88% to $3.103 per million British thermal units.
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Source: Investing.com
