Oil prices rose for a fourth straight session yesterday, topping $60 a barrel as Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) prepared to agree a production cut and the United States braced for winter. U.S. light crude for November delivery rose 13 cents to $60.07 a barrel, adding to Monday’s $1.37 rally and extending a recovery from a 2006 low of $57.22 touched last week. Brent crude added 21 cents to $61.87 a barrel.

“The OPEC cut and winter fears are limiting the downside but at the same time, the upside is limited by the high crude inventories in the United States,” said Tony Nunan, a risk manager with Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. “In the short term, the market is going to find it hard to go up and equally hard to go down.”

Ministers from the OPEC are due to meet tomorrow in Qatar to finalize a deal to cut one million barrels from daily output to stem oil’s rapid slide since a summer peak of $78.40 a barrel. However, the question remains whether the group, which supplies a third of the world’s oil, will cut from its nominal quotas or from current output. Wrangling over market share has delayed agreement on the curbs, first mooted more than two weeks ago.

Several members, including OPEC’s largest producer Saudi Arabia, have been producing above their official quotas and have already trimmed production, while others like Indonesia pump far less than their limits and are loathe to cede market share. “The telling thing is that the big boys like Saudi Arabia have yet to say anything and the only noises are coming from those who are producing below quota,” said Tony Nunan.

Prices have dropped from July’s record high due to growing inventories, easing supply risks and concerns that slower economic growth would impact on demand for oil, but the approach of winter may revive concerns over fuel consumption. Private weather forecaster EarthSat Energy WeatherWinter said that this year’s winter in the United States is expected to be 5 percent colder than last year’s unusually mild season, but still warmer than the 30-year norm.

A chilly winter could boost demand for heating oil and for natural gas, which rose 1.8 percent to $6.557 per million British thermal units after soaring 14 percent on Monday. The continued closure of a 200 000 barrel per day (bpd) oil field in Norway due to lifeboat safety issues also lent support, although the industry’s safety authority on Monday allowed Royal Dutch Shell to restart a smaller field sooner than expected.

Short-term gains may be limited by expectations of a further build in U.S. crude inventories by 1.1 million barrels for the week ended October 13, according to a preliminary Reuters survey ahead of data due on Wednesday. Middle distillate stocks, which includes heating oil, are forecast to ease by 500,000 barrels, while gasoline stocks were expected to slide by 100,000 barrels. The rise in crude stocks, said analysts, is due mainly to seasonal refinery turnarounds in the country, which would also lead to a drop in inventories of refined products.