Oil prices were down slightly on Thursday in the first part of the European session, with the market having its eyes fixed on the OPEC+ meeting whose objective is to decide on the level of supply of black gold returning to the market at the start. next year.

Around 10:50 a.m. GMT (11:50 a.m. in Paris), a barrel of Brent from the North Sea for delivery in February lost 0.52% compared to Wednesday's close at 48.00 dollars.

In New York, the US barrel of WTI for the month of January dropped 0.55% to 45.03 dollars.

“Will OPEC+ reach an agreement today?” asks Eugen Weinberg, analyst at Commerzbank.

If this is indeed the big question that observers and market players are asking themselves on Thursday, many answer it in the affirmative.

"The postponement of this week's OPEC + meeting (from Tuesday to Thursday, editor's note) has led to some progress, (...) two days of direct negotiations have brought the group closer to an agreement", indicated Stephen Innes, of Axi.

The thirteen members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meet by videoconference Thursday at 1:00 p.m. GMT (2:00 p.m. in Paris) with their OPEC + allies to try to reach a common position on their production quotas to come in a market depressed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The proposals apparently focus on a gradual easing of the cuts,” Mr Innes continued, not an abrupt return to the market of nearly 2 million barrels per day by January 1 as planned in the current agreement snatched from the government. spring.

“It is not clear whether the easing would start in January or after a three-month delay,” he continued.

Investors also digested on Thursday the smaller than expected decline in commercial crude stocks in the United States published the day before by the American Energy Information Agency (EIA).

According to a weekly report from the organization, the country's crude reserves fell by 700,000 barrels last week, slightly less than the 2 million barrels forecast by analysts.

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