Oil prices finished above US$63 a barrel on Friday, ending a bullish week as traders bet on blustery weather moving across the US and more production cuts from OPEC.
Light sweet crude for January delivery rose US$0.30 to settle at US$63.43 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude settled at US$64.62, up US$0.36, on London's ICE Futures exchange.
"Prices ended higher for the same reasons we've been talking about all week -- colder weather, output cuts and a report showing US inventory falling pretty steadily for the past few weeks," said Tom Bentz, a broker at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures in New York. "The market continued to hold on and closed out on a positive note."
Oil prices were down during most of the day, but bounced back in the last hours of trading.
"Overall the fundamentals near-term look pretty bullish," said Alaron Trading Corp analyst Phil Flynn.
Edmund Daukoru, Nigeria's oil minister and president of the 11-member OPEC, said the group is likely to trim production again and he expects a cut of at least 500,000 barrels a day.
"There is likely to be some further trimming, the actual amount will depend on the circumstances," Daukoru said. While the specific amount will be decided at the OPEC meeting based on data and trends.
"I don't expect anything less" than 500,000 barrels per day to be cut, he said.
That echoed comments on Thursday from Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramirez, who also said OPEC could cut production by half a million barrels a day when it meets on Dec. 14 in Abuja.
Also boosting oil prices was a major snowstorm that blanketed the Plains and Midwest on Thursday and Friday, dumping as much as 46cm of snow in some places. Another cold front is moving toward the Northeast this weekend, promising to blow away the unseasonably warm weather in the region.
Natural gas settled at US$8.422 per 1,000 cubic feet, down US$0.42.2. Prices were weighed down by the Institute of Supply Management's report showing that the US manufacturing sector contracted last month,the first time the sector contracted since April 2003.
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