While Vaughan said the reaction of the nimble US and Russia, along with Iran and Libya who are exempt from the deal, could undo all the short-term gains, it's the sentiment of OPEC's major producers that could be the key.

Douglas-Westwood also said yesterday OPEC's proposed production cuts faced "massive challenges" given the real numbers behind it are significantly larger than face value.

"Whilst OPEC is estimating its current production at 33.24 million barrels per day and is proposing to cut production to as low as 32.5MMbopd, the actual reduction is likely to be higher than the implied 724,000bopd," DW said.

DW estimates developments due to be brought on-stream across all 14 OPEC members before the end of next year would push production up to 33.62MMbopd, meaning the alliance must dig much deeper than the reported numbers suggest.

Assuming the quota is held at 32.5-33.MMbopd, DW estimates the cartel will effectively have to "hold back" at least 1.5MMbopd of production by 2018 to stick to its self-imposed limits.

Yet while OPEC barely represents 50% of global oil output these days, oil producers, particularly in Australia, have been looking for a sentiment change among Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners to engender some kind of price stability, as opposed to the volatility which has disenfranchised buyers and sellers in the mergers and acquisitions market.

After Sona Petroleum initially agreed to acquire the Quadrant Energy and Santos-owned Stag oilfield offshore Western Australia for $US50 million, that price dropped to $25 million and even then the Malaysian player's shareholders rejected it.

Toronto-listed Mitra Energy ended up picking it up for 20% the original price in July.

In terms of company M&A, Woodside Petroleum, Bermuda-based Scepter Partners and US private equity fund Lone Star all made acquisition tilts at Australian-listed producers Oil Search, Santos, and AWE, respectively, over the past year amid low oil prices and all were knocked back as "opportunistic" plays.

The rally of those three Australian companies after the OPEC deal was announced last week showed not only how highly-leveraged they are to oil prices, but how influential the cartel is on sentiment.

After dipping slightly after the initial euphoria, West Texas Intermediate settled up 1.2% at $US48.81 yesterday as Iranian president Hassan Rouhani told his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro in a phone call that non-OPEC producers should join the cartel in supporting the market, according to Tehran state news agency IRNA.

While this would seem somewhat disingenuous given Iran is exempt from the deal, the price reaction to even that call reflected the importance traders place on the intentions of major producers.

"For industry in general it's a positive in terms of foreshadowing more price stability going forward, which will be a good thing for the industry in Australia and for bringing more confidence towards a future price deck," Vaughan said.

"The issue has been the difficulty in valuing assets from an M&A perspective because depending on your view on oil prices there could be a massive disparity between what the perspective of the sellers and buyers are.

"That's been a result of the volatility we've had in oil pricing over the last 18 months, so getting more stability over that and getting both buy and sell-side participants to have a more aligned view on where prices are going and where the market is heading is going to assist in those M&A transactions actually happening, because the valuations are going to be closer.

"So while it remains to be seen what impact it will have on pricing, at least some players are trying to do something about it to bring about some stability."

He said there had been signs of an uptick in M&A in the region, which Vaughan put down to more aligned views on oil price stability rather than volatility.