SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Oil prices rose on Wednesday, paring overnight losses a day ahead of a meeting of OPEC and its allies.
Brent crude futures rose 36 cents to $64.50 a barrel at 0635 GMT, after falling 1.3% on Tuesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures jumped 34 cents to $60.89 a barrel, after falling 1.6% in the previous session.
“The expectation is OPEC+ is going to show supply discipline, so that’s pivoting the market,” Reuters cited Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar as saying.
OPEC and its allies including Russia, together called OPEC+, are set to meet on Thursday, following a month in which oil prices have whipsawed on concerns about extended pandemic lockdowns in Europe, slow vaccine rollouts and rising coronavirus cases in India and Brazil.
OPEC+ last month surprised the market by agreeing to extend supply curbs, with small exceptions for Russia and Kazakhstan, at a time when fuel demand appeared to be recovering.
“Given what’s happened since then, the rationale is even less so to add supply. So we think they’ll maintain that discipline in that meeting (on April 1),” Dhar told Reuters.
OPEC led by Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC producers, led by Russia, have cut just over 7 million barrels per day (bpd), while Riyadh has made an additional voluntary reduction of 1 million bpd.
A source told Reuters this week that Saudi Arabia was prepared to back an extension of the supply cuts into June, including its own voluntary cut, to boost prices.
