Crude rises as Iraq pledges to cooperate with pact

Bloomberg

Oil rose as Iraq pledged to cooperate with OPEC to reach an agreement this week that’s acceptable to all members.
Futures rose as much as 2.7 percent in New York, reversing an earlier decline. Iraq’s Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaibi said Monday he’s “ optimistic” a deal will be reached at OPEC’s summit in Vienna on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia said a day earlier that the producer group doesn’t necessarily need to curb output, after pulling out of a scheduled meeting with non-members including Russia.
The Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries is heading into the last stretch of negotiations before its Nov. 30 meeting to adopt a supply deal that was first floated in September.
Oil prices whipsawed last week as various OPEC members and Russia tried to position themselves ahead of a final accord to reduce production. Ministers from Algeria and Venezuela headed to Moscow on Monday to get the biggest non-OPEC producer on board.
“The past weeks’ back and forth of diplomacy reveals how small the common denominator is,” Norbert Ruecker, head of commodity research at Julius Baer Group Ltd. in Zurich, said by e-mail. “Chances for a deal are high but we remain skeptical that it has teeth and see no lasting impact on prices.”
West Texas Intermediate for January delivery rose as much as $1.25 to $47.31 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $47.09 as of 9:21 a.m. local time. Prices lost $1.90 to $46.06 a barrel on Friday. Total volume traded Monday was 40 percent higher than the 100-day average.
Brent for January settlement advanced as much as $1.19, or 2.5 percent, to $48.43 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract dropped 3.6 percent to $47.24 on Friday. The global benchmark traded at a $1.22 premium to WTI.

Saudi Stance
While Saudi Arabia has pushed to reverse OPEC’s pump-at-will policy, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said Sunday the oil market would recover in 2017 even without cuts as consumption grows in countries such as the U.S., according to Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.
Russia has so far resisted requests to join a cut, offering instead to freeze production at current levels. Energy Minister Alexander Novak has insisted that OPEC reach an
internal consensus on output
curbs before Russia considers joining an accord.
Algerian Energy Minister Noureddine Boutarfa, architect of the preliminary agreement reached in Algiers, presented a proposal Saturday to Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh for an OPEC cut of 1.1 million barrels a day, according to an Iranian Oil Ministry official.