The next meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at which members were expected to discuss output cuts has been delayed by a few days, helping push down oil prices and energy stocks Wednesday.
OPEC said the summit, usually held in Vienna, would be pushed back to Nov. 30, from Nov. 25-26. It didn’t give a reason for the change. Stocks of oil majors
Exxon
(ticker: XOM) and
Chevron
(CVX) fell on the news, down 1.6% and 1.5%, respectively.
APA Corp.,
parent of Apache, was down 3%, while
Hess
(HES) dropped 2%.
OPEC and its allies, which include Russia, have been limiting production to prop up crude prices, and it was speculated they may make more cuts at this meeting. Oil prices have fallen about 20% since they touched 2023 highs a few months ago.
West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, fell 4.1% on Wednesday to $74.60 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, retreated 3.8% to $79.29. Both contracts were off about 7% from where they were at the start of the year.
Exxon
shed 1.6% in premarket trading Wednesday.
Chevron
fell by the same amount.
Write to Brian Swint at [email protected]
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