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OPEC and non-OPEC members are gathering in Vienna, Austria, this week, with the aim of reaching an accord to deliver a fresh round of supply cuts.
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But, even with the oil market near the bottom of its worst price plunge since the 2008 financial crisis, few external observers expect the energy alliance to engineer a succinct production quota that satisfies oil traders.
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"The market's biggest fear is that it doesn't matter whether OPEC understands fundamentals, it is Trump that is controlling OPEC policy," Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects, told CNBC's Hadley Gamble in Vienna.
Oil markets are deeply concerned about the power President Donald Trump has over some of the world's largest crude producers, energy analysts told CNBC on Wednesday, ahead of a much-anticipated meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC members.
The influential oil cartel and its allied partners are gathering in Vienna, Austria, this week, with the aim of reaching an accord to deliver a fresh round of supply cuts.
But, even with the oil market near the bottom of its worst price plunge since the 2008 financial crisis, few external observers expect the energy alliance to engineer a succinct production quota that satisfies oil traders.
"This is the first time I think we have come into an OPEC meeting that is so political. We literally don't know how they are going to message this," Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects, told CNBC's Hadley Gamble in Vienna.
"Given how fragile the market is, the market's biggest fear is that it doesn't matter whether OPEC understands fundamentals, it is Trump that is controlling OPEC policy."
"And if they are unable to communicate what they are going to do very clearly — which I think there is a big risk that they can't — the market is going to sell-off because their biggest fears are going to get confirmed," Sen said.
Key oil producers deeply divided
Crude futures have fallen more than 28 percent since climbing to a four-year peak in early October, amid intensifying oversupply concerns and worries over slowing economic growth.
This collapse has ratcheted up the pressure on OPEC and its allied partners to orchestrate another round of production cuts at its final meeting of the calendar year.
International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $62.04 a barrel at around 10:50 a.m. London time (5:50 a.m. ET), down around 0.1 percent, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) stood at $53.27, little changed from the previous session.
OPEC's technocrats have signaled that the alliance needs to cut between 1 million to 1.4 million barrels a day in order to deal with the looming oversupply. But sources recently told The Wall Street Journal that OPEC is wary of announcing cuts on that scale.