Oil prices edged lower on Monday, pulled down by a rising rig count in the United States and a strong dollar but expectations of an Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) intervention next month to curb production gave them a floor.<\/p>\n
US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were trading at $50.18 per barrel, down 17 cents from their last settlement, and after hitting a session low of $49.94 a barrel.<\/p>\n
International benchmark Brent crude oil futures eased seven cents to $51.88 per barrel, after falling to as low as $51.56 a barrel earlier.<\/p>\n
Traders said that WTI was under pressure from a report on Friday by oil services provider Baker Hughes showed U.S. drillers added four rigs in the week to Oct. 14. It was the 16th week in a row that oil drillers had gone without making cuts, indicating more production to come.<\/p>\n
A firmer dollar also weighed on prices, as an expected hike in US interest rates later this year drove the U.S. currency to a seven-month high against a basket of currencies.<\/p>\n
Dollar-traded oil becomes more expensive for holders of other currencies when the greenback strengthens, potentially limiting demand.<\/p>\n
But analysts said that the market is fundamentally supported by expectations that members of the Opec would take action to support prices at their meeting in Vienna on November 30.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very hard for the Brent crude price to sell below the $50 a barrel market ahead of the November 30 meeting,\u201d said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB.<\/p>\n
He said that Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia sent a very clear statement about working to curb production and support higher prices, but added that an oversupplied physical crude market was capping further gains in prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oil prices edged lower on Monday, pulled down by a rising rig count in the United States and a strong dollar but expectations of an Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) intervention next month to curb production gave them a floor. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were trading at $50.18 per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33891,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33887\/revisions\/33891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}