	far east traders expect dlr oil in january opec s agreement to limit output to mln barrels per day bpd for the rest of the year should boost spot prices and enable the group to raise its official reference price to dlrs a barrel in january from the current dlrs far east oil industry sources said fundamentally the market situation is bullish and the official price will be dlrs in january a japanese refiner said the sources said that in spite of over production by opec members such as iraq the united arab emirates kuwait and qatar demand should exceed supply by the fourth quarter spot oil prices surged on friday in late u s trading as the market anticipated an opec agreement on second half output in early tokyo trade levels were firm at dlrs for mideast dubai cargoes loading next month and dlrs for u k brent traders said they said they expect more foreign s to be sucked into the u s market as the benchmark  west texas intermediate wti trades at around dlrs with wti at or dlrs u s refiners will import mideast and far east s and this will strengthen those grades further said a japanese oil trader some tokyo traders were cautious about whether thu spot market has further upward potential in the short term having risen strongly on the opec news on friday you could certainly argue that if new york rose on that basis there s no reason for prices to go up again today said one international oil trader in tokyo but i think if there s any sign of a dip it will be bought back up again pretty quickly he added one oil industry analyst concurred there is no reason to expect a weak market from now on he said he expected opec to raise prices to dlrs when it meets on december oil sources said spot prices are unlikely to surge strongly in the next few months due to cheating by some opec members and the likelihood that saudi arabia will act as swing producer to maintain steady prices iraq is currently producing around two mln barrels per day compared to its second half quota of mln they said its export capability will rise to mln bpd when a new pipeline through turkey comes onstream in or around september qatar is said to be achieving sales of around bpd against its opec assigned quota of by discounting up to cents a barrel from official prices the sources said iran the united arab emirates and kuwait are also cheating on the opec agreement with over production and effective price discounts through counter purchases industry sources said but they mostly agreed that saudi arabia will unofficially act as swing producer cutting production to compensate for higher output by other members or boosting output if spot prices rise too high too fast saudi arabia has a floating oil stockpile of to mln barrels saudi arabia wants oil price stability so the stockpile may be utilized to cool down the market if it rises too much an oil industry analyst said reuter 
