Investing.com – Crude oil prices settled lower on Monday as traders opted for caution ahead of the OPEC meeting in Vienna, where it’s widely expected that OPEC and non-OPEC producers will agree to extend output curbs.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for December delivery fell by 46 cents to settle at $56.09 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent fell 51 cents to trade at $62.21 a barrel.
Oil futures added to losses sustained last week as traders opted against initiating bullish bets on oil prices ahead of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Nov. 30.
In May, Opec producers agreed to extend production cuts for a period of nine months until March, but stuck to production cuts of 1.2 million bpd agreed in November last year.
With a little over a week to go until the Opec meeting, investor expectations of an extension to the deal to curb outputs remained elevated following several weeks of positive comments from OPEC producers.
"We're expecting a potential extension of the deal, that's the general market consensus, OPEC knows that it needs to continue doing what it's doing because its targets haven't been reached," said Mustafa Ansari, energy economist at development bank Arab Petroleum Investments Corp.