Oil fall more than 3% but a big announcement on production freeze could be made today

Crude-oil futures fell significantly affected by fading optimism regarding the possibility of a deal on limiting oil production. Pressure on also provided renewed strengthening of the American currency.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said that Iran expects OPEC meeting just to exchange views on the situation on the market, and not to conclude an agreement on the freezing of production. His counterpart from the United Arab Emirates Suhail Al Mazrui said that his country supports the production freeze. However, Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Khalid al-Falih described the meeting as a consultative exercise.

At the same time, Russia's oil minister said that Russia wants to freeze the oil production at the current level. It is worth emphasizing that oil production in Russia in recent years has risen to a record high of 11.75 million barrels per day.

Earlier, Wall Street Journal reported that OPEC members will discuss a proposal to limit production by about 1 million barrels a day for 1 year, but the likelihood of the deal still remained low, analysts noted. Recall, according to the September OPEC report, the total volume of oil production in the world has decreased in comparison with July by 0.14 million barrels per day in August, to 95.65 million barrels. At the same time supplies from OPEC countries decreased by 23 thousand barrels per day and other oil-producing countries -. 0.11 million barrels a day.

Investors also drew attention to the updated forecasts by Goldman Sachs. Today, the investment bank downgraded the outlook for WTI in the 4th quarter of 2016 from $ 50 to $ 43, as the supply-demand balance was weaker than expected, including due to the larger production growth in the current quarter. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs confirmed the assessment of the average annual price of oil in 2017 at $ 52 per barrel, prices will range from $ 45 to $ 50 per barrel in the first half. The outlook for global oil demand was left unchanged: the expected growth in annual terms is1.4 million barrels a day.

The cost of the November futures for US light crude oil WTI (Light Sweet Crude Oil) fell to 44.34 dollars per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

November futures price for North Sea petroleum mix of mark Brent fell to 46.40 dollars a barrel on the London Stock Exchange ICE Futures Europe.