Oil Prices Soar as Russia Announces Output Cut

Crude oil prices jumped more than 10 percent Thursday after Russia said it was ready to join forces with OPEC and cut output.

Traders shrugged off a forecast of the first decline in oil demand in 25 years, instead anticipating joint efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia to slash production in an effort to bolster prices.

 
Oil rigs extract petroleum in the Los Angeles area community of Culver City, California. Crude oil prices jumped more than 10 percent Thursday after Russia said it was ready to join forces with OPEC and cut output.(AFP/Getty Images/File/David McNew)

Light sweet crude for delivery in January closed at 47.98 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a gain of 4.46 dollars, or 10.25 percent, from Wednesday’s close.

In London, Brent North Sea crude for January jumped 4.99 dollars, or 11.77 percent, to settle at 47.39 dollars a barrel on the InterContinental Exchange.

AFP

After the benchmark New York contract closed Friday at a four-year low of 40.50 dollars, the market has increasingly focus on next week’s OPEC meeting in Oran, Algeria.

Russia is ready to join forces with OPEC to stem the plunge in crude prices and could even become part of the oil cartel if membership were in Moscow’s interests, Russia President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

“Our partners, colleagues from the oil club (OPEC) are asking us to have a coordinated policy and whoever I meet, they are asking quite actively,” he said in remarks broadcast on state television.

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