New York: Oil prices went under the psychological $50 a barrel mark on Thursday on the back of a supply glut offsetting some of output cut efforts from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The West Texas Intermediate for March Delivery was trading at $49.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on intra-day trade, following a fall of over 5 per cent at close of trade on Wednesday.

The OPEC wants higher oil prices, but lower market share can complicate its efforts to prop up prices with output curbs. Oil prices climbed on March 9 due to a strong compliance with touted international production cuts, although a surge in U.S. crude inventories continued to drag.

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister says OPEC production cuts are working to bolster crude prices and his country will look at whether other oil-producing nations are living up to their promises to curtail pumping before deciding whether to extend the cutbacks beyond this summer. Khalid Al-Falih expressed no great alarm Tuesday about the recovery in American oil output since crude prices began rebounding in early 2016.

Nigeria expects the economy to climb out of recession and grow 2.19 percent this year, the budget ministry said on Tuesday, unveiling a reform plan that includes selling assets and hiking a luxury goods tax. The new Economic Recovery and Growth Plan 2017-2020 says gross domestic product is expected to grow an average of 4.62 percent a year until 2020, and hit 7 percent that year.

Crude futures drifted marginally higher on Monday, but trading was largely tepid as investors saw little reason to rush back to the market. traded at $54.33 a barrel, up $0.34, or 0.6%, in the Globex electronic session.

U.S. oil prices stayed at a 19-month high Wednesday after OPEC leaders affirmed that the supply cut effort by heavyweights producers was making headway. traded at $54.52 a barrel, up $0.19, or 0.2%, in the Globex electronic session.

NEW DELHI: Wholesale inflation shot up to a 30-month high of 5.25 per cent in January as rising global crude oil prices spiked domestic fuel cost, even as food prices moderated. The wholesale price index based inflation , reflecting the annual rate of price rise, in December stood at 3.39 per cent.

The International Energy Agency said Friday that the cartel achieved 90% compliance in January on its share of production cuts that total 1.8 million barrels per day. The price of U.S. crude oil futures spiked 1% to trade at $53.50 a barrel after the report.

Bloomberg conducted a survey among analysts, oil companies and ship-tracking data. The result was that the group on average saw OPEC cut oil production by 840k b/d in January.

Oil price volatility has been absent since December, and as one of our team members, Pain Capital, said in his Daily Pain on 1/18 : HFI Research remains bullish on oil prices and believe we could see WTI hit $70 by Q3 2017, however, the short-term price action and fundamentals continue to support a ranged price action. We do not see catalysts kicking in for oil until the start of Q2 2016.

Kuwait’s national oil company says it has contained an oil leak at one of its southwestern oil fields. A statement by the Kuwait Oil Co.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russian officials said Sunday they were making good progress on their pledges to cut back crude-oil production and raise global prices. Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih said OPEC’s 13 nations and 11 producers outside the cartel had made collective cuts totaling 1.5 million barrels a day since agreements were struck in late November and early December.

OPEC and key non-OPEC oil producers seeking to push up the price of crude by cutting production say participants appear to be exceeding pledges to reduce output. Russia and 10 other nations outside OPEC agreed with the 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in December to take a total of 1.8 million barrels of oil a day from the global market within the first half of this year.

Former minister of petroleum resources, OPEC president Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke has denied unsubstantiated allegations that were made recently by the EFCC regarding the sum of $153m forfeiture. I am deeply disturbed and bewildered by recent media reports claiming that by virtue of an order of the Federal High Court, I have forfeited to the Federal Government, the sum of $153.3m which I purportedly stole from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.