Yahoo Finance Crude Oil Prices Settle Lower; OPEC Meeting Eyed
Investing.com - Crude oil prices retreated from above three-year highs but sentiment remained upbeat amid expectations that major oil producers will confirm continued compliance with OEPC-led production curbs in a meeting slated for Friday.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for May delivery fell 0.2% to settle at $68.33 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent rose 0.16% to trade at $73.61 a barrel.
Crude oil prices settled lower as traders appeared to take profit on the recent rally in oil prices, while a report of a slight uptick in global supplies kept a lid on a potential recovery.
Oil production in Kazakhstan hit 1.9 million barrels per day recently after four weeks of maintenance in the country, Bloomberg reported. Kazakh oil production was said to be 160,000 above the country’s target level, according to the OPEC-led production-cut agreement, Bloomberg said.
The modest tick lower in oil prices comes a day before the joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee is expected to confirm major oil producers remained in strong compliance with the production-cut agreement.
At the last joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting in January, the committee said OPEC and its allies saw compliance with the deal to curb production at 129% in December 2017.
In November 2016, OPEC and other producers, including Russia agreed to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) to slash global inventories to the five year-average. The OPEC-led deal was renewed last year through 2018.
The deal led to a sharp decline in excess crude supplies, which stood at just 12 million barrels above the five-year average in March, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
OPEC has persevered with production-curbs despite the ongoing expansion in non-OPEC production, led by the U.S., which overtook Saudi Arabia as the world’s second largest oil producer behind Russia.
Total domestic crude production edged up by 15,000 barrels a day last week to 10.54 million barrels a day, the EIA reported Wednesday.
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