Oil slides as non-OPEC nations demur on output limit plan

By Libby George

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices slid on Monday after non-OPEC producers made no specific commitment to join OPEC in limiting oil output levels to prop up prices, suggesting they want the oil producing group to solve its differences first.

Officials and experts from OPEC countries and non-OPEC nations including Azerbaijan, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Oman and Russia met for consultations in Vienna on Saturday and only agreed to meet again in November before a scheduled regular OPEC meeting on Nov. 30, they said in a statement.

London Brent crude for December delivery was down 90 cents at $48.81 a barrel by 1312 GMT after settling down 76 cents on Friday.

U.S. WTI crude for December delivery was trading down 70 cents at $48 a barrel, after closing down $1.02 on Friday.

"It's a continued readjustment to the fact that OPEC still cannot agree to a number," PetroMatrix managing director Olivier Jakob said of OPEC's failed efforts last week to agree how to put in place a deal to make modest cuts in order to limit output to 32.5-33.0 million barrels per day (bpd).

Talks in Vienna last week sputtered following objections from Iran, which has been reluctant to even freeze its output, sources said.

OPEC and non-OPEC countries said in a joint statement that their Saturday meeting was a "positive development" towards reaching a global output limiting deal on Nov. 30.

Reservations over OPEC's ability to reach a binding agreement to limit output prompted analysts to leave their price outlook broadly unchanged, a Reuters poll showed on Monday.

Robin Bieber, director with PVM Oil Associates, said the OPEC deal was "a shambles."

"If OPEC were in any doubt what awaits failure to agree a production cut in November, last week's price action should have been a wake-up call," Bieber said.

Asian imports of Iranian crude oil jumped by 70 percent in September on the year, a sign of its growing market share, while Russia expects to increase its oil output by 0.7 percent next year and a further 0.9 percent in 2018, the draft federal budget showed.

Russia also expects crude production to hit a record-high 548 million tonnes in 2017, up from an estimated 544 million tonnes this year.

In another bearish sign, money managers cut their net long U.S. crude futures and options positions for the first time in five weeks in the week ended Oct. 25, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Aaron Sheldrick Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Mark Potter)