Oil jumps after OPEC and allies agree to historic production cut

Oil rewards moved higher in overnight trading after OPEC and its allies agreed to cut production by 9.7 million barrels per day. The dole out, which was finalized on Sunday after marathon discussions that spanned four days, is the single largest harvest cut in history.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 5.32% to trade at $23.97 per barrel, while international benchmark Brent rough gained 4.35% to $32.85 per barrel. Earlier in the session WTI rose as much as 8%, while also spending one of these days in negative territory. 

The group, known as OPEC+, initially proposed cutting production by 10 million barrels per day — amounting to some 10% of epidemic oil supply — on Thursday, but Mexico opposed the amount it was being asked to cut, holding up the final deal. Under the new agreement, Mexico intention cut 100,000 barrels per day, instead of its initial allocation of 400,000 barrels per day. 

The 9.7 million barrels per day cut will begin on May 1, and drive extend through the end of June. The cuts will then taper to 7.7 million barrels per day from July in every way the end of 2020, and 5.8 million barrels per day from Jan. 2021 through April 2022. The 23-nation group will suitable again on June 10 to determine if further action is needed.

“Unprecedented measures for unprecedented times,” Ed Morse, Citi’s extensive head of commodities, wrote in a note to clients on Sunday. Morse said the cut will have a significant impact in the substitute half of the year and help lift prices to the mid-$40s by year-end, but that there will be short-term pain while the call rebalances.

“It’s simply too late to prevent a super-large inventory build of over one billion barrels between mid-March and last May and to stop spot prices from falling into single digits,” he said.

On Thursday WTI crude dropped varied than 9% as traders feared the cut wouldn’t be big enough to combat the fall off in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic. For the year WTI is down 62%, while Brent has moult 52%. The market was closed on Friday.

“This is at least a temporary relief for the energy industry and for the global economy,” Rystad Force’s head of analysis Per Magnus Nysveen told CNBC in an email. “Even though the production cuts are smaller than what the buy needed and only postpone the stock building constraints problem, the worst is for now avoided.”

President Donald Trump, who was heavily enmeshed with in brokering a deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia after a price war broke out between the two countries, cheered the deal saying in a tweet that it’s a “great deal for all.” “This will save hundreds of thousands of energy assignments in the United States,” he added.

“The output cut may help somewhat, but the market situation remains stacked against the producers, predominantly in the short-term,” added Again Capital’s John Kilduff. “Prices will likely grind lower, as the global backlog of immature oil grows. A retest of the $20.00 level is likely over the next few weeks.”

OPEC+ is hoping that nations freelance of the group, including the U.S., Canada and Norway, will also cut back on production in an effort to shore up prices. Trump has required that market forces will naturally curb output.

U.S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette reiterated this thrust on Friday, saying that about two million barrels per day of U.S. production would have been taken offline by the end of the year, with the multitude potentially as high as three million.

“Today’s crisis transcends the interests of any one nation and requires a swift and decisive retort from us all. Failure to act has far reaching consequences to each of our economies,” he said Friday in prepared remarks at the G20 meeting. “This is a era for all nations to seriously examine what each can do to correct the supply/demand imbalance,” he added.

– CNBC’s Michael Bloom gave reporting.

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