Investing.com - Oil prices jumped in choppy trade on Monday after Iraq’s oil minister said he was “optimistic” that Wednesday’s crunch OPEC meeting will yield an agreement on output cuts.
U.S. crude oil was up 78 cents or 1.78% at $46.88 a barrel at 0931ET, after falling as low as $45.16 earlier.
Global benchmark Brent futures were at $49.08 a barrel, up 81 cents or 1.68%.
Prices jumped after Iraqi oil minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi said Monday he is “optimistic” that OPEC will reach an agreement that is acceptable to all this week.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is attempting to get its 14 member states, along with non-OPEC member Russia, to implement coordinated production cuts aimed at reducing a global supply glut that has seen oil prices halve in two years.
In September the producer cartel reached an agreement that would reduce production to between 32.5 million and 33 million barrels per day.
OPEC is to hold a meeting in Vienna on Wednesday, where the deal was expected to be finalized.
But reaching an agreement on a deal to cut output has proved problematic, with some producers reluctant to curb production.
Over the weekend Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Khalid al-Falih said oil prices will stabilize in 2017 without an intervention from OPEC.
The remarks raised fresh doubts over whether an agreement on OPEC’s first production cut in eight years would be reached.
Meanwhile, oil ministers from Algeria and Venezuela were to travel to Moscow on Monday and Tuesday, ahead of Wednesday’s key meeting, in a bid to persuade Russia to take part in cuts rather than merely freezing output.
Most analysts believe that some form of consensus will be reached, but doubts remain over whether it will be enough to support the market.
"An agreement to a large production cut could send oil prices closer to $60 per barrel before year's end, while failure to reach an agreement could cause oil prices to fall back to the low $40 per barrel," analysts at Nordea said.