The cuts to key Asian refiners, which are estimated to total at least 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), provided the first hard evidence that OPEC’s top producer is removing supplies from the market after the cartel agreed late last week to cut production by a deeper than expected 4.3 percent compared to September.

Oil prices retraced some losses on Monday’s news, but remained below $60 a barrel and at near their lowest this year on doubts over whether other producers would follow through.

“Our company received notification from Saudi Arabia at the weekend,” one source at a Japanese refiner said. The refiners will receive about 92-93 percent of the volume they agreed to buy under annual contracts with state oil firm Saudi Aramco.

Unipec, the trading arm of top Asian refiner Sinopec, which is Saudi Arabia’s largest independent customer in Asia, will see a 7-8 percent cut to its supplies, a trade source said. Unipec lifts about 90 percent of China’s 500,000 bpd of Saudi imports.

Sources with two South Korean refiners that buy Saudi crude also confirmed cuts of 5-7 percent. Taiwan’s Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC) received a cut of about 7 percent, while India’s Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL) got a similar reduction.

Aramco typically applies output cuts evenly to most of its Asian customers, who lift about 3.5 million barrels per day (bpd), or half of the kingdom’s exports. An 8 percent cut to the region would remove some 280,000 bpd from the market.

Aramco normally notifies customers how much crude they will receive before the middle of the month preceding their scheduled shipments. It had informed Asian lifters earlier this month that they would receive 100 percent of their contracted supplies in November, as they had for the last year and a half.

Oil majors with global contracts had said in mid-October that their supplies would be cut by about 5 percent next month, but they appeared to have been alone in the curbs. It was not immediately clear whether oil majors received deeper cuts.

Japanese refiners said they had yet to receive any notice of cuts from other OPEC member countries such as Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Iran, which are also due to curb imports but rarely do so as publicly or as deeply as Saudi Arabia.

 OPEC cuts show teeth

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Friday agreed to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), deeper than the 1 million bpd it had discussed, in an effort to stem a 25 percent slump in oil prices from a July peak.

But the surprisingly deep cut failed to stop U.S. crude from touching a fresh 2006 low on Friday. Many traders questioned whether all members would fully comply with the limits, despite the firm backing of Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi.

The weekend notices may remove some of the traders’ doubts and help restore the producer group’s credibility.

“Naimi does what he says he will do, and past data show the market reverses direction whenever he made such commitments,” said Keith Sano, the manager at Sumitomo Corp’s commodity business department in Tokyo. “Most likely, OPEC will cut its output again in December.”

Naimi and other ministers said a further 500,000 bpd cut was possible when OPEC gathers for its next scheduled meeting in Abuja in December to address high crude and fuel inventories in consuming nations and a projected drop in demand for OPEC oil.

U.S. crude prices reversed losses to rise as high as $59.47 a barrel after news of the Saudi cuts, but later eased back to $59.34 a barrel, up 1 cent on the day, by 0634 GMT.

The largest share of OPEC’s cut was coming from Saudi Arabia, which is shouldering about 32 percent of it, or 380,000 bpd.