Investing.com - Oil prices fell sharply during North American morning hours on Wednesday, pulling back from the prior session's seven-week highs as investors looked ahead to weekly data from the U.S. on stockpiles of crude and refined products.
Industry group the American Petroleum Institute is due to release its weekly report at 4:30PM ET (21:30GMT) later on Wednesday. Official data from the Energy Information Administration will be released Thursday, amid forecasts for an oil-stock rise of 3.3 million barrels.
The reports come out one day later than usual due to Monday's President's Day holiday.
Last week's numbers showed U.S. output helped boost crude and gasoline inventories to record highs, feeding concerns about a global glut.
Crude oil for April delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange lost 67 cents, or around 1.2%, to $53.67 a barrel by 9:35AM ET (14:35GMT). The U.S. benchmark reached $55.03 on Tuesday, a level not seen since January 3.
Elsewhere, Brent oil for April delivery on the ICE Futures Exchange in London shed 71 cents, or about 1.2%, to $55.95 a barrel, after touching $57.31 a day earlier, just shy of its highest level of the year.
Oil prices rallied after OPEC Secretary-general Mohammad Barkindo said compliance rate among cartel members who agreed to participate in the production cut deal is expected to increase above the current 90%.
Oil inventories would decline further this year, he added.
Hedge funds extended their bullish bets on oil to an all-time high last week as OPEC and non-OPEC countries made a strong start to lowering their oil output under the first such pact in more than a decade.
January 1 marked the official start of the deal agreed by OPEC and non-OPEC member countries such as Russia in November last year to reduce output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day to 32.5 million by the end of June.
The deal, if carried out as planned, should reduce global supply by about 2%.
OPEC could extend its oil supply-reduction pact with non-members or even apply deeper cuts from July if global crude inventories fail to drop to a targeted level, OPEC sources said last week.
Futures have been trading in a narrow $5 range around the lower-to-mid-$50s over the past two months as sentiment in oil markets has been torn between hopes that oversupply may be curbed by output cuts announced by major global producers and expectations of a rebound in U.S. shale production.
Elsewhere on Nymex, gasoline futures for March inched up 0.6 cents, or 0.5%, to $1.499 a gallon, while March heating oil slumped 2.7 cents ,or 1.7%, to $1.614 a gallon.
Natural gas futures for April delivery were little changed at $2.694 per million British thermal units, after falling to a six-month low of $2.642 earlier as forecasts continued to call for mostly warmer-than-normal weather in key regions across the U.S. for the rest of the winter.