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NYMEX Crude $ 49.10 DN $.2300
NY Harbor ULSD $1.4975 UP $.0035
NYMEX Gasoline $1.6149 DN $.0170

NEWS
Overall declines in global crude production helped oil prices score their fourth straight monthly gain in a row on Tuesday. Oil futures, however, finished the session lower after failing to hold above the key $50-a-barrel price level, with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ meeting this week not expected to yield any deal to ease crude production. Elsewhere in the energy market, natural-gas futures rallied more than 5% as weather forecasts backed the potential for higher demand.

West Texas Intermediate crude for delivery in July settled at $49.10 a barrel, down 23 cents, or 0.5%, on the New York Mercantile Exchange after tapping a high of $50.10. For the month, prices finished roughly 6.9% above the $45.92 front-month contract settlement on April 29. They climbed for a fourth-straight month—their longest stretch of monthly gains since 2011.

July Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange shed 7 cents, or 0.1%, to end at $49.69 a barrel on the contract’s expiration day. Prices, based on the front-month contract, rose 3.2% for the month. August Brent which became the front month at the settlement, ended at $49.89, down 47 cents, or 0.9%. For oil, $50 is likely to serve as resistance, said Troy Vincent, an oil analyst at ClipperData. Prices for both WTI and Brent had rallied past that level during an early rally Tuesday. “The market was getting ahead of itself,” and wasn’t reflecting what the positive U.S. personal consumption expenditures data, which could support a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike, he said. The earlier rally also ignored the “bigger picture developments,” such as “growing supply out of OPEC nations, and the physical limitations and sustainability of the recent pace of demand growth out of China.”

Waiting on OPEC
The major event for this week, however, is the OPEC biannual meeting Thursday in Vienna, which is unlikely to yield any formal consensus on curtailing production, analysts said. “With U.S. production steadily declining and oil prices seeing their longest stretch of monthly gains in five years, any incentive to cut production has been significantly weakened,” said Robbie Fraser, commodity analyst at Schneider Electric, in a note Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Iraq’s OPEC envoy Falah al-Amri told The Wall Street Journal there is no specific proposal on production on the meeting agenda. In North America, U.S. crude production and inventories have shown a steady downtrend. The U.S. Energy Department expects the trend to persist at least until 2017. In Nigeria, oil production and exports continue to be hampered by militant groups. The continuing violence has plunged the country’s oil production to the lowest level since 2009. But as wildfires in Canada’s oil-sand hub are coming under control, the country’s largest energy company Suncor Energy said it expects to commence production by the end of the week.