Oil futures traded lower Tuesday, pulling back a day after progress toward a COVID-19 vaccine fueled sharp gains for crude.
West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery
CL.1,
fell 14 cents, or 0.3%, to $41.20 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. January Brent crude
BRN00,
the global benchmark, was off 13 cents, or 0.3%, at $43.69 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
WTI jumped 3% and Brent rose more than 2% on Monday after Moderna Inc.
MRNA,
announced its COVID-19 vaccine candidate was more than 94% effective in preventing infections. That came a week after Pfizer Inc.
PFE,
and BioNTech SE
BNTX,
said their vaccine candidate was highly effective.
Meanwhile, traders remain focused on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, a group known as OPEC+. The alliance’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, which is scheduled to meet virtually on Tuesday, is likely to recommend delaying, by three to six months, a relaxation of output curbs set to take effect on Jan. 1, said analysts at UniCredit, in a note. A final decision would come at an OPEC+ meeting at the end of the month.
A delay along those lines should be enough to prevent crude inventories “from rising sharply in the first half of 2021, which is traditionally a period of weaker demand,” said Eugen Weinberg, commodity analyst at Commerzbank, in a note.
