Oil futures finished higher on Friday, with prices achieving a second-straight monthly gain but suffering from the first quarterly loss of the year, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, November West Texas Intermediate crude added 41 cents, or 0.9%, to settle at $48.24 a barrel. Tracking the front-month contracts, prices fell nearly 0.2% for the quarter, but gained roughly 7.9% for the month.
On the London ICE Futures Exchange, November Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell 18 cents, or 0.4%, to end trading at $49.06 a barrel for the contract’s expiration. The December contract tacked on 38 cents, or 0.8%, to end trading at $50.19 a barrel. Brent crude futures rose more than 1% for the quarter and saw a gain of over 4% for the month.
WTI oil futures have risen more than 7% over the past two sessions after OPEC caught the market off guard by reaching a preliminary pact to slash the cartel’s output between 32.5 million barrels a day and 33 million barrels a day, down from the levels of 33.2 million barrels a day in August. A more definitive policy, including production cap for individual members, will be discussed and possibly ratified at OPEC’s next meeting on November 30 in Vienna.
“OPEC has no way of enforcing the quotas,” said Jonathan Chan, an energy analyst at Phillip Futures.
