Oil prices steadied above $74 on Tuesday, as traders watched a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and Opec kept a lid on output ahead of its meeting next week. US crude was up 11 cents at $74.15, after trading electronically on Monday when the US Labour Day holiday shut the New York trading floor.
London Brent crude was down 16 cents at $73.25. Felix, a dangerous Category 4 hurricane, was due to hit land in Nicaragua and Honduras on Tuesday, though oil and natural gas producers said they had not yet evacuated platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, home to a third of US domestic crude and 70 percent of Mexican crude output.
"The market is neutral we'll have to wait and see if the hurricane hits US refineries," said Tetsu Emory, a fund manager at Astmax Futures in Tokyo. Traders are also waiting for Opec's meeting on September 11 in Vienna, with signs that the exporter group will retain output curbs after a Reuters survey found Opec kept oil production restricted in August. Consumer nations have been calling for more oil as the price climbs back towards its August 1 all-time high of $78.77.
Oil analysts also say Opec must boost supplies to keep pace with growing demand this winter. Opec has repeatedly said shortfalls of refined products are not its problem and the world is amply supplied with crude.
The 10 Opec countries subject to output restrictions all except Iraq and new member Angola kept production little changed at 26.74 million barrels per day (bpd) in August, the Reuters survey showed. Total Opec supply fell because of a drop in Iraqi exports.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, source of more than a third of the world's oil, agreed last year to lower production by 1.2 million bpd from November 1 and by a further 500,000 bpd from February 1.
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