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Crude-oil futures edged slightly higher to flat on Monday morning, as investors watched developments from a gathering of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Russia, on output.
“Prices are staying largely flat as OPEC+ has the full attention of the oil market,” wrote Louise Dickson, senior oil markets analyst at Rystad Energy, in a Monday research note.
Reuters reported Monday, citing three sources, that the group of oil producers, collectively known as OPEC+, will adhere to an existing agreement to produce an additional 400,000 barrels a day in November. Late last week, speculation had been that the group might increase output “beyond its existing deal to boost production by 400,000 barrels a day,” as prices for crude trade near year three-year highs.
“What will shape prices going forward is the key topic of the meeting, how much more crude it will release to the market from November,” the Rystad analyst wrote.
An uneven recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in parts of the world, coupled with a surge in energy products, such as natural-gas futures, has been complicating OPEC+’s decision-making, reports say.
“Normally there wouldn’t be any doubt that OPEC+ will stick to its existing supply recovery plan, but as global supply is more constrained than what the group previously expected and as demand signals are increasingly bullish, a talk of potentially bringing back more barrels than planned is within reason,” Rystad’s analyst said.
See: Why OPEC+ is likely to keep its plan to boost oil output
November West Texas Intermediate crude
CLX21,
edged down by 7 cenrs, or less than 0.1%, to reach $75.81 a barrel on the on the New York Mercantile Exchange, not far from the highest front-month contract level since October 2018, which the contract ended on Friday, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The December Brent contract
BRNZ21,
the international benchmark, meanwhile, was trading 12 cents, or 0.2%, higher at $79.40 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
Based on the front-month contracts, WTI crude futures rose 2.6% last week and Brent crude ended nearly 2.7% higher for the period.
Meanwhile, November natural gas
NGX21,
was up 6 cents, or 1.1%, at $5.69 per million British thermal units, after climbing just over 8% for the week, after ending September with a gain of 34%.
