Oil tumbles on Doha meet flop

(MENAFN- The Arabian Post) Oil tumbled after output talks Sunday between the world's biggest producers ended without an agreement, outweighing the supply impact of strikes that cut 60 percent of Kuwait's output.

Futures fell as much as 6.8 percent in New York. The summit in the Qatari capitalfaltered after Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations wouldn't agree to a deal unless all OPEC members joined including Iran, which didn't attend the meeting, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters afterward. Separately, an open-ended labor dispute cut production by Kuwait, OPEC's fourth-largest member, to 1.1 million barrels a day, according to Saad Al-Azmi, deputy chief executive for finance and spokesman at Kuwait Oil Co.

Sixteen nations representing about half the world's output gathered Sunday to seek a solution to the global supply glut that pushed prices to a 12-year low earlier this year. The plunge in Kuwait's production 'is just shocking,' Edward Bell, a commodities analyst at Dubai-based bank Emirates NBD PJSC, said Sunday by phone.

'There were expectations there was going to be a freeze agreement excluding Iran,' said Mike Wittner, head of oil market research at Societe Generale SA. 'It's bearish, no question, because the market was clearly pricing something in.'