Investing.com – Crude futures settled higher on Friday, but ended the week in negative territory, as investors continued to doubt whether Opec and its allies’ global pact to curb production would stem the glut in supply amid rising U.S. output.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for July delivery rose 28 cents to settle at $44.74 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent added 32 cents to trade at $47.24 a barrel.
Oilfield services firm Baker Hughes reported on Friday that the number of U.S. oil drilling rigs in operation rose by 6 to 747 in the week to June 16, stoking fears that the rising U.S. production could derail Opec’s efforts to reduce global inventories to the five-year average.
“[But] even by the end of the year, it looks to us that there will still be 150m-200m barrels of surplus inventories.” Gary Ross, head of oil at Pira Energy Group, a unit of S&P Global Platts.
The Baker Hughes report came after a duo of inventory updates from both Opec and the International Energy Agency earlier in the week, showing that production remained elevated while stockpiles continued to swell.
Opec said Tuesday, that output from the group rose by 336,000 barrels per day in May to 32.14m barrels per day while the International Energy Agency said it expects production to grow by 700,000 bpd this year.
In May, Opec and non-Opec members agreed to extend production cuts for a period of nine months until March, but stuck to production cuts of 1.8 million bpd agreed in November last year.