NYMEX Crude $ 48.81 UP $.5700
NY Harbor ULSD $1.5532 UP $.0149
NYMEX Gasoline $1.4705 UP $.0074

NEWS
Oil futures settled at a multiweek high on Monday, after a volatile session which saw prices switch between gains and losses as traders assessed last week’s preliminary production agreement by OPEC and it’s potential to curb the global glut.

November West Texas Intermediate crude rose 57 cents, or 1.2%, to settle at $48.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after touching lows under $48 and highs above $49. Tracking the most-active contracts, prices settled at their highest level since Aug. 19, according to FactSet data. Based on the front months, however, it was the highest settlement value since July 1, according to Dow Jones. WTI Prices saw a gain of roughly 7.9% last month and a third-quarter decline of nearly 0.2%. The December contract for Brent picked up 70 cents, or 1.4%, to end at $50.89 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London—the highest futures prices in roughly six weeks.

“Prices are wrestling with competing forces…and will likely be seeing this volatility until the end of November,” Troy Vincent, oil analyst at ClipperData, told MarketWatch. “Bullish hopes of a concrete accord being agreed upon at [the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’s] late-November meeting are being met with a strengthening U.S. dollar and the prospect of Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, and Libya ramping up production throughout Q4,” he said. “Where prices will end day-to-day is anyone’s guess, but if this past year’s trend is set to continue, prices will trend higher on hopes of OPEC action balancing the global market.”

WTI oil prices rose by 8.5% last week after OPEC reached a preliminary agreement to reduce output to between 32.5 million and 33 million barrels a day. But several market observers believe that the OPEC deal still has a way to go before it delivers on its early promise and OPEC has said that details on how the agreement will be implemented won’t be released until the group’s next scheduled meeting on Nov. 30.

New York-based Morgan Stanley said the risk of disappointment over the deal is high, and that it is unclear whether the agreement isn’t just aimed at settling the nerves of a jittery market for another couple of months. It added that more discussions were needed, particularly with major non-OPEC producers such as Russia, to ensure that positive sentiment won over the past week isn’t quickly lost. “Early indications that OPEC production reached a new high in September may also weigh on market sentiment,” said Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures and OTC Clearing. “The lack of Russian participation could also be seen as a limiting factor, especially after their output reached a new post-Soviet record of 11.11 [million barrels per day] during September.”

The U.K.’s Barclays said that the deal meant expectations have now been raised and any doubts as to the ability of OPEC to curb production offered serious downside potential for prices over the coming weeks. With so much resting on OPEC, other analysts were quick to dampen any overly enthusiastic price forecasts for the rest of 2016. London-based Energy Aspects said that short- to midterm supply and demand fundamentals make it unlikely that prices will rise beyond the $50-$55 a barrel bracket. The think tank also warned that production cuts from the cartel were the only real solution to a swifter rebalancing of the supply-demand equilibrium. “With non-OPEC supplies already falling by the wayside, there is little rebalancing that can occur outside of OPEC,” Energy Aspects said in a note.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the oil rig count, which offers a proxy for oil activity, increased by seven rigs to total 425 last week according to the oil-field services company Baker Hughes.