Briefing highlights
- Much at stake at weekend oil meeting
- Crude prices continue to climb
Over a barrel
We’ll not see $100-a-barrel crude anytime soon, but this weekend may well mark a milestone for the oil market.
Saturday’s meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers in Vienna is also key to Canada’s oil patch and your household budget.
Oil prices are rising again on speculation that the OPEC countries, which have already struck a deal to cut production in January by 1.2 million barrels a day, will bring their non-OPEC counterparts on board. Russia, which is meeting with some of the players a day in advance, has already agreed to a cut of 300,000 barrels a day to hlep in the effort to ease the glut and support prices.
Being a major producer, there’s a lot at stake here for Canada. As The Globe and Mail’s Jeff Lewis reports, the industry is taking initial steps to bring back projects that were shelved after crude prices collapsed.
And, of course, as anyone with a car knows, we’ve saved a lot of money at the gas pump during the oil shock, and observers believe we’ll paying more as crude prices rise.
In its latest report this week, Moody’s Investors Service said it sees a “modest rebound” continuing next year in the industry.
There are doubts surrounding the OPEC production cap, though, with analysts wondering whether the individual countries will live up to their sides of the bargain. This time, however, OPEC has struck a monitoring committee to maker sure.
“This weekend sees OPEC and non-OPEC members meet with a view to agreeing the second half of the output cut discussed in Vienna,” said IG market analyst Joshua Mahony.
“With Russia seemingly on board, this may seem like a foregone conclusion. However, even if we did get an agreement across the line, it is quite another thing getting each country to actually conform to their given quota.”
Stocks mixed
Global markets are mixed so far.
Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 1.2 per cent, and the Shanghai composite 0.5 per cent, though Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.4 per cent.
In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 and Germany's DAX were little changed by about 7:45 a.m. ET, while the Paris CAC 40 was up 0.3 per cent.
New York futures were up.
“Just when you think U.S. stocks may have peaked and can’t move any higher they go and register new all-time highs once again, in what is becoming a fairly regular theme, with the Dow, S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 repeating the trick for the second day in a row,” said CMC Markets chief analyst Michael Hewson, referring to Thursday’s action.
How markets closed Thursday