Crude-oil prices staged a rebound in early Asia trade Friday after an overnight retreat, but the market will likely remain cautious ahead of the Doha meeting later this month when key producers are set to discuss a production freeze to salvage prices. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in May traded at $37.94 a barrel at 0247 GMT, up $0.68 in the Globex electronic session. June Brent crude on London's ICE Futures exchange rose $0.54 to $39.97 a barrel. "The rebound in Asia is mainly due to short-covering. Prices are likely to fluctuate range bound until the April 17 meeting," said an oil analyst at an Australia-based bank. Oversupply has been the main culprit of persistently low prices, which are around 30% lower than at the same time last year. The proposed production freeze provided some temporary relief but the market is still on edge over worries the freeze may not materialize because two major heavyweights--Iran and Saudi Arabia--remain at odds over whether to participate in the accord. Iran has refused to curtail production and vowed to keep pumping until production is on par with the levels seen before sanctions. Iran's oil minister last week said the country's oil exports jumped again in March, rising by 250,000 barrels a day, to surpass 2 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia, one of the original initiators of the pact, has signalled it would back out of the plan unless Iran is on board. "The market is in suspense until the meeting. Until then, unless there are sudden changes in rhetoric by the major players, the market will stay in a wait-and-see mode," said Barnabas Gan, a commodity analyst at OCBC. Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for May--the benchmark gasoline contract--rose 222 points to $1.4034 a gallon, while May diesel traded at $1.1432, 175 points higher. ICE gasoil for April changed hands at $334.50 a metric ton, up $11.00 from Thursday's settlement.
