FOCUS-Oil sinks as traders wary on more output cuts
LONDON, June 8 (Reuters) - Oil prices slunk lower on Monday despite keen Saudi Arabian efforts to lean on fellow producers for further output cuts.
Benchmark Brent crude futures at 1000 GMT were trading at $14.47 a barrel, 13 cents down on the day and still nearly $5 a barrel below last year's average.
Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi will continue his tour of key Middle East producers with visits to Kuwait and Iran this week.
Naimi intends to gather support for wider output cuts on top of last week's Amsterdam pact between Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico which pledged to cut 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) from saturated oil markets.
Naimi stopped off on Sunday in Qatar, where he secured a 20,000 bpd output cut, the United Arab Emirates and non-OPEC producer Oman.
''You will see announcements of production cuts in coming days...from Gulf states and those outside the region,'' a well-placed source told Reuters.
But traders remained wary.
''I am a bit cynical about the oil cuts,'' said one crude oil broker in London.
"The market's been a bit disappointed so far," said another.
''If he (Naimi) can get pledges from everyone else than it would be supportive, but they might have been better off keeping quiet until they got the whole package together.''
Iran has welcomed the Amsterdam pact but has not committed itself to further production cuts before the full OPEC meeting on June 24.
Kuwait has said it might consider reducing output after a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Riyadh on June 16.
The GCC groups together OPEC members Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and non-OPEC Bahrain and Oman.
Oman's oil minister Mohammad bin Hamad bin Seif al-Ramhi said only that ''we support the initiative of the three countries in Amsterdam...we are seriously reviewing the whole issue.''
Oman was one of non-OPEC producers that joined in the March Riyadh pact to slice some 1.5 million bpd from world supplies.
That briefly pushed Brent above $15 last month.
But prices have since been dragged down by the global stock glut and producers' failure to fulfill pledged production cuts.
Analysts say that producers have only taken 850,000 bpd of oil off the market, little over half the cuts committed.
And they are calling for the current round of cutbacks of to remove one million bpd if prices are to enter producer $16-18 a barrel comfort zone.
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