Oil retreats, cautious before G20 and OPEC meetings

New York (awp / afp) – Oil ended slightly lower on Tuesday, fears of a growing imbalance between supply and demand as well as the rising dollar prompt investors to be cautious as major meetings of the G20 and OPEC.

Brent North Sea crude oil for delivery in January sold 27 cents to close at $ 60.21 on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in London.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), a barrel of WTI for the same maturity lost 7 cents to finish at 51.56 dollars.

The prices went down during the session "while the dollar was particularly robust against major currencies," said Bart Melek, TD Securities. An increase in the greenback tends to reduce the attractiveness of the barrels of crude, sold in dollars, for investors with other currencies.

"But the market remains especially under the pressure of concerns about supply, especially in the United States where it continues to grow, and the demand", with the fear of seeing the trade dispute between Beijing and Washington affect the growth world, said Mr Melek.

Market players expect two events in this regard: the G20 summit in Argentina, where Chinese and US heads of state meet, and a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna.

The cartel will meet on Dec. 6 for its first plenary meeting since the collapse of oil prices and its partners, including Russia, will join the organization the next day to discuss possibly stricter production targets.

Analysts struggle to predict Saudi Arabia's position, which could both limit production to push up prices and keep prices low to appease its US ally, with whom relations have been tense since the murder of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

"Given larger production from OPEC, Russia and the United States, as well as less disrupted Iranian exports than expected, we expect Saudi Arabia and OPEC to reduce production by million barrels a day, "analysts at Societe Generale said.

In the shorter term, analysts will turn to the weekly data on US reserves, which will be released Wednesday by the US Energy Information Agency.

For the week ended Nov. 23, analysts expect a drop of one million barrels of crude stocks, a rise of one million barrels of gasoline and 500,000 barrels of those of distilled products, according to analysts. the median of a consensus established by Bloomberg.

bur-jum / alb / cj