Oil jumped by seven per cent, and the Canadian dollar rose above 73 cents as optimism grew Wednesday about a deal to curb overproduction of crude.
The benchmark North American contract, West Texas Intermediate crude, rose $2 to $31.04 US a barrel at midday, a 6.9 per cent increase.
Brent was up $2.47 at $34.65 US a barrel. Oil is still trading at levels that make most North American production unviable.
But traders were encouraged by closed-door talks in Tehran by Iran's oil minister with his counterparts from Iraq, Venezuela and Qatar.
The OPEC members appeared to welcome a freeze on output agreed to Tuesday by Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar, but conditional on other countries agreeing to similar freezes.
Iran did not agree to keep its output low, as it has only recently been released from sanctions that eroded its share of oil markets worldwide.
Iran used to export 2.3 million barrels a day, but it has been limited to one million barrels a day since 2011.
"These countries increased their production by four million barrels when Iran was under sanctions," Iran's OPEC envoy Mahdi Asali was quoted as saying by the Shargh daily. "Now it's primarily their responsibility to help restore balance on the market. There is no reason for Iran to do so."
The United Arab Emirates' energy minister also dodged questions from reporters on the freeze proposal.
But international investors maintained their hope that OPEC would pull its fractious members into line and allow production to fall enough that prices could rise.
Oil's rise encourage both stock markets and the Canadian dollar, which rose more than a full cent to 73.15 cents US.
The TSX rose 227 points to 12,782.
New York's Dow index was up 208 points at 16,405 after data pointing to a recovery in the U.S. manufacturing sector.
U.S. factories cranked out more cars, furniture and food in January. The Federal Reserve said factory output rose 0.5 percent, the biggest increase since July.
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