Crude oil futures traded higher on Thursday morning as the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) meeting decided to continue with the present production output cuts.
At 9.53 am on Thursday, June Brent oil futures were at $89.63, up by 0.31 per cent, and May crude oil futures on WTI (West Texas Intermediate) were at $85.71, up by 0.33 per cent.
April crude oil futures were trading at ₹7,148 on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) during initial trading against the previous close of ₹7,162, down by 0.20 per cent, and May futures were trading at ₹7,102 against the previous close of ₹7,121, down by 0.27 per cent.
Geopolitical crisis
The 53rd meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of OPEC, which took place via video conference on Wednesday, decided to keep its policy on production output cuts unchanged. This decision indicated a tight outlook for crude oil in the coming days.
The meeting reviewed the crude oil production data for the months of January and February and noted the high conformity for participating OPEC and non-OPEC countries of the Declaration of Cooperation.
The committee welcomed the pledge of Iraq and Kazakhstan to achieve full conformity as well as compensate for overproduction. It also welcomed the announcement by Russia that its voluntary adjustments in the second quarter of 2024 will be based on production instead of exports.
The meeting decided that participating countries with outstanding overproduced volumes for January, February and March will submit their detailed compensation plans to the OPEC Secretariat by April 30.
Geo-political issues related to Israel-Hamas war and Russia-Ukraine also created apprehensions over the crude oil supply disruptions.
Meanwhile, the data released by the US EIA (Energy Information Administration) showed an increase in crude oil inventories in the US for the week ending March 29.
US commercial crude oil inventories increased by 3.2 million barrels from the previous week. However, the total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 4.3 million barrels from last week.
Total products supplied in the US over the last four-week period averaged 20.3 million barrels a day, up by 1.4 per cent from the same period last year.
Turmeric gains, kapas slips
April copper futures were trading at ₹795.60 on MCX against the previous close of ₹790.65, up by 0.63 per cent.
On the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), April turmeric (farmer polished) contracts were trading at ₹17,000 against the previous close of ₹16,828, up by 1.02 per cent.
April kapas futures were trading at ₹1,525.5 on NCDEX during the initial hour of trading on Thursday morning against the previous close of ₹1,536, down by 0.68 per cent.