Gold Prices Fall Amid Rate Jitters; Copper Steady as China Stimulus Eyed 
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Khalid al-Falih has once again thrown his weight behind OPEC deal extension just weeks ahead of the ministerial meeting that will take place in Vienna on November 30th. He said that he along with his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak will push for a further extension of the agreement at the meeting to convince some of the skeptical members like Nigeria. The current agreement to reduce production by as much as 1.76 billion barrels per day compared to November 2015 level expire in March 2018 and Mr. Falih said that the members would have to recognize that the OPEC objective will not get reached by the time the current deal expires. With this production agreement, the OPEC members aim to reduce excess inventories and bring back the level close to its five-year average.
While Mr. Falih reiterated his support of an extension, he also said that OPEC doesn’t want to see the price too high. A previous spike in the oil price before 2008/09 Great Recession led to demand destruction and pushed the world towards developing alternative energy sources more rapidly. Higher oil price would make it less competitive to alternative energy sources. Mr. Falih said, “We don’t want any spikes in price that shock the market. We don’t want any price movements that are unhealthy for demand. We don’t think we’ve seen any of that yet but that’s a potential especially if God forbid we have disruptions in any major country. We’re hopeful none of this will happen.”
WTI is currently trading at $56 per barrel and Brent at $6 per barrel premium to WTI.
