Commodities: Crude sours below $50 a barrel amid output worries

Crude-oil futures were continuing to sour below $50 a barrel on Monday afternoon as traders remained rattled by non-Opec producers and their inability to agree an output cap over the weekend.

At about 14:09 GMT, Nymex-priced West Texas Intermediate was down 1.64% to $47.90 a barrel and
Intercontinental Exchange-traded Brent was down 2.03% to $48.70 a barrel.

"Oil is extending its decline after swing producers failed to agree on a deal to curb the supply," said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK Ltd.

Crude's retreat followed remarks by officials from non-Opec nations such as Azerbaijan, Brazil, Russia, Oman, Kazakhstan and Mexico meeting in Vienna on Saturday.

"Hopes were high going into this meeting that perhaps we will have some sort of positive news but those hopes were squashed," said Aslam, adding that neither Opec nor non-Opec members were ready to freeze output, let alone introduce a production cut.

"Now the traders will have to wait until their (next Opec) meeting and hope will be their only friend until then if they want to see supply cut."

All of this followed Iraq commenting during the previous week that it did not want to be part of an Opec deal to lower output.

Aslam added that near-term support for WTI crude was $47 a barrel, and that said that a break of this would "open the floor" towards $44 a barrel.

Meantime, Comex-quoted gold was down 0.21% to $1274.1 an ounce, while silver fell 0.01% to $17.8 an ounce and copper gained 0.23% to 219.85 cents a pound.

London Metals Exchange-priced three-month industrial metals prices for copper, aluminum, zinc and tin were all up more than 1%.

Elsewhere, Chicago Board of Trade-quoted corn was flat at 355 cents a bushel and wheat was up 1.29% to 413.75 cents a bushel.

ICE-listed cocoa fell 0.49% to $2635 a MT and cotton No.2 eased 0.06% to 70.78 cents a pound. Live cattle was down 0.05% to 104.3 cents a pound.