Investing.com – Crude settled higher on Friday, but ultimately ended the week negative, as record levels of U.S. crude inventories continued to weigh oil prices while the number of active U.S. drilling rigs rose for a tenth straight week.
Oilfield services firm Baker Hughes reported its weekly U.S. rig count rose by 21 to 652, it was the tenth straight weekly increase.
Fears of a glut in U.S. crude inventories came against bullish comments from a Saudi energy ministry official on Thursday, who told Reuters that crude exports to the United States in March would fall by around 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) from February and hold at those levels for the next few months.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for May delivery gained 27 cents to settle at $47.97 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent added 25 cents to $50.81 a barrel.
Oil prices have slumped over the last two weeks, as investors started to question the effectiveness of OPEC’s efforts to reduce supply, after U.S. crude production continued to swell.
U.S. crude oil stockpiles rose to an all-time high of 533.1 million barrels for the week ended March 15, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Wednesday.
Non-OPEC producers that joined a global deal to reduce output to boost prices delivered 64% of promised cuts in February, an industry source said last Friday.
Meanwhile, investors braced for a fresh batch of weekly data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) due to be released on Wednesday, March 29 at 10:30 EDT.