Oil prices down more than 4% with OPEC+ yet to agree

Crude oil prices were trading Friday with more than a 4% loss as OPEC and non-OPEC oil producing countries are yet to agree how much additional crude production cuts they have to make in order to balance the oil market.

The price of Brent crude was trading at $47.95 per barrel at 1133GMT for a 4.1% decline after ending Thursday at $49.99 a barrel. The international benchmark fell to as low as $47.02 at 1040GMT.

American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) declined as much as $43.28 a barrel on Friday, and later it was trading at $44.01 per barrel for a daily loss of 4.1% from its previous closing of $45.90 a barrel.

The member countries of the group known as OPEC+ are holding talks at the final day of their meeting in Austrian capital Vienna, but they have not come up with a final decision yet.

In order to mitigate the adverse impact of coronavirus that caused weak oil demand around the world and increasing supply glut in the global oil market, OPEC members advised OPEC+ Thursday to lower their total oil production by an additional 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) for the second quarter of 2020

While OPEC proposed a 1 million bpd of reduction would come from its members, it advised non-OPEC to curb its total oil output by 500,000 bpd.

It is yet unknown how much non-OPEC heavyweight Russia will agree to curb its individual production to help non-OPEC to provide a 500,000 bpd output cut.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak left the OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) meeting on Wednesday before it was concluded, while Russian news agency TASS ran reports late Wednesday that Russia and Kazakhstan would not support an additional output cut of 1.5 million bpd for the second quarter.

Novak returned Friday to the talks in Vienna, but OPEC+ failed to come up with a final agreement after starting their meeting around 0930 GMT.