Oil traders won't need to worry about additional crude supply reaching the market in December after OPEC and allied producers on Sunday said they would postpone by a month a planned Dec. 1 unwinding of earlier production cuts.
While the announcement sent West Texas Intermediate futures to as high as $71.81/bbl and pushed Brent above $75.40/bbl, contracts over the last hour of the morning backed off some of the early gains on weaker follow-through buying.
Crude and refined product futures were also getting some support from forecasts calling for a hurricane to form in the Gulf of Mexico later this week. Current models say a Category 1 storm could make landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama. Similar storms in previous years have not led to any serious damage to refiners or Gulf of Mexico crude production, but have depressed demand.
The NYMEX December WTI contract was trading at $71.19/bbl near midday, up $1.70. The January Brent contract was $1.65 higher at $74.75/bbl.
In U.S. cash markets, Gulf Coast gasoline led the way higher with gains of about 7.25cts/gal. The NYMEX December RBOB contract was up by about 4.63cts/gal to $2.0128/gal and prices in other cash markets were 0.75 to 4.5cts higher.
The U.S. average retail price for regular gasoline dipped below $3.10/gal on Monday, while the median price was unchanged from last week at $2.999/gal.
Cash diesel prices were also higher and the NYMEX December ULSD contract was up by 4.46cts to $2.2788/gal.
This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
--Reporting by Tom Kloza, tkloza@opisnet.com; Editing by Jeff Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 04, 2024 12:25 ET (17:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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