Investing.com - Oil prices retreated during North American hours on Thursday, after surging by as much as 6% a day earlier, as the initial euphoria over a preliminary agreement on oil output faded amid doubts over how OPEC would implement such a plan.
Crude soared on Wednesday after OPEC members surprised the market by agreeing to cut oil output in the first such deal since 2008 in talks held on the sidelines of an energy conference in Algeria. The 14-member bloc, however, deferred the task of finalizing a plan to make those cuts until November.
Brent oil for December delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London dipped 15 cents, or 0.3%, to $49.09 a barrel by 9:40AM ET (13:40GMT). The contract rose to $49.65 earlier, the most since September 9.
On Wednesday, London-traded Brent futures jumped $2.72, or 5.85%, after OPEC reached an agreement to limit production to a range of 32.5 million to 33.0 million barrels per day, a reduction of 0.7%-to-2.2% from its current output of 33.2 million barrels.
However, the market remained skeptical of the deal, pondering how such a plan would be implemented. Some analysts cautioned that the agreement left out crucial details on how much each country will produce.
The 14-member oil group said it will wait until the official OPEC meeting in Vienna on November 30 to finalize the decision, when an invitation to join cuts could also be extended to non-OPEC countries such as Russia.
Elsewhere, crude oil for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange inched up 5 cents, or 0.11%, to $47.10 a barrel, after rallying $2.38, or 5.33%, a day earlier.
Weekly government supply data released on Wednesday showed that crude stockpiles in the U.S. fell for the fourth week in a row. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, crude oil inventories declined by 1.9 million barrels last week, compared with analysts' expectations for an increase of 3.0 million barrels.
However, the data also revealed a large build in gasoline inventories, which rose 2.0 million barrels, far more than the gain of 178,000 barrels forecast by analysts.