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Oil prices rise again as Saudis cut production

Oil is approaching $50 a barrel again and gas prices are rising as Saudi Arabia and other oil producers cut production to protect their profits.

"Crude oil jumped 9.5 percent, the biggest gain in five weeks, after the Saudi Arabian oil minister said he had delivered the output cuts promised to OPEC, a sign that world supplies are smaller than traders had estimated.

"Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi minister, said in an interview in Poznan, Poland, that the kingdom pumped 8.493 million barrels of oil a day in November, close to its OPEC production quota of 8.477 million barrels a day. That's 287,000 barrels a day less than estimated by the International Energy Agency," reports Bloomberg in this story.

"Crude oil for January delivery rose $4.15 to $47.67 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures are heading for the biggest gain since Nov. 4. Oil is up 17 percent so far this week, the largest one-week gain since June 1998, when OPEC slashed output by more than 3.1 million barrels a day."