Oil falls, Brent drops below $75 as OPEC+ talks deadlock

Oil prices continued to fall as the US market opened on Monday, resuming losses after taking a 2-day pause, as the US crude lost around 2%, and Brent crude fell below $75 a barrel, which comes after the OPEC-Plus alliance talks ended in a deadlock, while the dispute between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is still ongoing, which raises uncertainty about the future of the group's output cuts.

US crude fell 1.6% to $73.47 a barrel, after opening at $74.67, and hit a low at $74.90, and Brent crude fell more than 1.4% to $74.46 a barrel, after opening at $75.52, and hit a low at $75.82.

The US crude gained 2.0% on Friday, and Brent crude rose 1.7%, posting their second straight daily gain, within recovery from a 3-week low, after the US dollar fell against a basket of major currencies.

Oil prices lost around 0.6% last week, in the first weekly loss in seven.

This weekly loss came due to the collapse of OPEC Plus talks about August's output levels and the extension of the output cuts until the end of 2022.

OPEC-Plus ministerial meeting last Thursday has been postponed without disclosing any date for the next meeting due to a Saudi-Emirati dispute.

The dispute sparked after the UAE objected to a proposal to increase output by 2 million barrels per day from August to December, and to extend the entire cuts until the end of 2022.

The current output cuts are about 6 million barrels per day, scheduled to end in April 2022, and the group was going to increase output by 400,000 bpd until the end of 2021, reducing the cuts to 5.6 million bpd until the end of 2022.

Public disagreement is rare between OPEC members, but the increasing divergence of national interests will likely affect the production policy of the alliance, and may eventually lead to its collapse.