Oil Holds After 8th Weekly Advance as Drill Rig Count Declines
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(Bloomberg) — Oil held gains after rising for an eighth week as U.S. drillers reduced the number of active rigs to the fewest in more than four years. Futures were little changed in New York after capping a 0.4 percent gain on Friday, the longest run of weekly increases since February 2013. The rig count declined by 11 to 668, the lowest level since September 2010, according to Baker Hughes Inc. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which meets in June, is unlikely to cut its output quota, according to Mohsen Ghamsari, head of international affairs at state-run National Iranian Oil Co.
Oil has rebounded from a six-year low in March amid signs a reduction in drilling is leading to a slowdown in output from U.S. shale producers. The rally may still falter as the nation’s stockpiles remain more than 100 million barrels above the five- year average for this time of year. West Texas Intermediate for June delivery was at $59.26 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 13 cents at 9:04 a.m. Sydney time. The contract rose 45 cents to $59.39 on Friday. The volume of all futures traded was about 77 percent below the 100-day average. Brent for June settlement was 8 cents lower at $65.31 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. It fell 15 cents to $65.39 a barrel on Friday. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $6.12 to WTI.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Sharples in Melbourne at bsharples@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pratish Narayanan at pnarayanan9@bloomberg.net Alexander Kwiatkowski, Aaron Clark
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