Oil Prices Mixed After OPEC Announce Production Cut

Investing.com – Oil prices were mixed on Monday after OPEC announced on Friday a supply cut of 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from January.

for January delivery dropped 0.11% to $52.11 per barrel at 12:37 AM ET (05:37 GMT) on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while London’s Intercontinental Exchange showed that for February delivery gained 0.6% to $62.02 a barrel.

OPEC announced Friday that it will reduce overall production among its members by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) during the first six months of 2019 in an effort to stave off a global glut in supplies and prop up prices.

The producer club will curb output by 0.8 million bpd from October levels, while non-OPEC allies contribute an additional 0.4 million bpd of cuts, in a move to be reviewed at a meeting in April.

Oil futures jumped sharply on Friday in reaction to the new production cut agreement.

“Our key conclusion is that oil prices will be well supported around the $70 per barrel level for 2019,” analysts at Bernstein Energy said on Monday.
However, not all analysts expect the cuts to be sufficient to end oversupply.
Edward Bell, commodity analyst at Emirates NBD bank, said in a note on Sunday that “the scale of the cuts…isn’t enough to push the market back into deficit” and that he expected “a market surplus of around 1.2 million bpd in Q1 with the new production levels.”

Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported last week that domestic crude supplies fell by 7.3 million barrels, the first decline in domestic crude supplies in 11 weeks.

In other news, Japan, the world’s third biggest economy and No.4 oil consumer, reported its gross domestic product shrank more than expected in the third quarter.

The GDP was down at an annualised rate of 2.5%, compared with an initial estimate of a 1.2% contraction and against economists’ median forecast for a 1.9% decline, revised data from the Cabinet Office showed.

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