US stock market opens lower as OPEC meetinglooms

NEW YORK (AA) - The stock market opened lower Wednesday with falling oil prices amid worries that OPEC would not cut nor freeze its oil production at its upcoming meeting Thursday.

The Dow Jones fell 85 points to begin the day at 17,701 points. The S&P 500 decreased 9 points to open at 2,087, while the Nasdaq was down 19 points to begin the day at 4,929.

At the opening bell, the American benchmark West Texas Intermediate was down 2.4 percent to trade at $47.93 per barrel while the international benchmark Brent crude fell 2.3 percent to $48.80 a barrel.

It is highly unlikely that OPEC will trim or freeze its output at its biannual meeting in Vienna on Thursday, and the market has begun pricing this decision in reflecting it in oil prices, according to analysts.

The cartel refused to cut its production at its previous three meetings on Nov. 2014, June 2015 and Dec. 2015.

Since oil prices reached around $50 a barrel last week, from less than $30 a barrel in January this year, OPEC feels less pressure to make any downward revisions on its oil supply.

The organization lifted its official output quota of 30 million barrels a day last December, and in April its output reached 32.4 million barrels a day.