MW: Oil prices gain as OPEC is expected to keep output on hold
Traders are also awaiting U.S. government data on petroleum inventories
By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Crude futures rose above $82 a barrel on Wednesday, as the OPEC oil cartel was widely expected to keep its production quota unchanged at its meeting in Vienna.
Crude oil for April delivery gained 43 cents to $82.13 a barrel in electronic trading on Globex.
The contract extended its gains from Tuesday, when it rose more than 2% after the U.S. Federal Reserve kept interest rates on hold and reiterated its pledge to keep them low for an extended period.
Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet Wednesday in Vienna, where they are expected to keep output on hold.
The meeting "will be a nonevent and unlikely to generate the same degree of volatility we saw with the Fed announcement," said Edward Meir, senior commodity analyst at MF Global.
"Practically every minister has been on record saying that OPEC will be keeping quotas where they are, while the cartel's members -- with the exception of the Saudis and a few other Gulf countries -- are producing as much oil as they can despite restrictions, dragging overall compliance to between 53%-60%," Meir wrote in a note to clients.
OPEC members will call for better compliance with each country's current quota, Dow Jones Newswires reported, quoting a Nigerian energy minister.
Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Ali Naimi has said that OPEC won't allow global oil markets to get to the point where they put too much pressure on prices, according to the report.
OPEC's current daily quota stands at 24.845 million barrels, but January compliance with that target was at 54.4%, according to a Platts survey of OPEC and industry officials and analysts.
Supply data due
The Energy Information Administration will report data on U.S. petroleum inventories at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.
Analysts polled by Platts expect an increase of 1.9 million barrels in crude supplies for the week ended March 12. They also project a decline of 1.5 million barrels in gasoline inventories and a decrease of 1.6 million barrels in distillate supplies.
The American Petroleum Institute reported late Tuesday that U.S. crude-oil inventories rose by 403,000 last week, less than analysts expected. Gasoline stocks dropped by 3.65 million barrels and distillate stocks declined by 756,000 barrels, the API also said.
