Oil falls nearly two percent on stocks sell-off\, pares OPEC deal gains

Oil falls nearly two percent on stocks sell-off, pares OPEC deal gains

Reuters  |  NEW YORK 

By Jessica Resnick-Ault

A gauge of global equities stumbled, putting it on track for its fifth straight daily decline, as losses in and extended to Wall Street on new signs the U.S.-trade spat was impacting world economic growth.

The market was also weighed down by confusion stemming from British Theresa May's postponement of a on her Brexit deal and sluggish data from the world's largest economies including the U.S, China, and in recent days.

"The stock market and market correlation is back on today," said John Kilduff, a at Management in "These worries about the global economy and the demand outlook that follows on that for are a bigger and bigger negative for the market."

Brent fell 75 cents to $60.96 a barrel by 11:54 a.m. EST (1654 GMT), while U.S. futures fell 95 cents to $51.66 a barrel.

Prices closed 3 percent higher on Friday after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and some non-OPEC producers, including heavyweight Russia, said they would cut by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from January.

The deal will be signed in three months' time in Saudi Arabia, when OPEC and its allies will decide on extending the agreement after six months, the UAE's minister said on Monday.

"Friday's agreement was a seemingly good one, or maybe we should say the best one under the current circumstances," Tamas Varga, a with PVM Oil Associates, said.

"As good as it looks, our view is that it will not be able to provide long-term price supports because it could not help global deplete."

Global equities have fallen by nearly 8 percent so far this year, battered by concern about slowing corporate earnings and the threat to the broader economy from an escalating trade dispute between the and

A steep increase in the pace of crude supply growth this year, especially in the world's three largest producers - the United States, and - has made a number of analysts wary about the prospect of demand being sufficient to mop up extra oil.

"As usual, prices are not a target of OPEC+ policy, but our takeaway is that current price levels largely meet the interests of most participating countries," said.

of Emirates NBD said "the scale of the cuts ... isn't enough to push the market back into deficit" and that he expected "a market surplus of around 1.2 million bpd in Q1 with the new production levels".

have fallen sharply since October on signs of an economic slowdown, with Brent losing almost 30 percent in value.

(Additional reporting by in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by and Adrian Croft)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Mon, December 10 2018. 22:49 IST