NEW YORK: Oil prices settled below $50 on Friday to mark their biggest weekly loss in six weeks, on concerns OPEC will not fully carry out a planned output cut, even as data showed US oil drillers removed rigs from production for the first time since June.
Oil services company Baker Hughes Inc. said two rigs were cut this week, ending a 17-week recovery in the number supplying the market.
But the market’s attention remained on disagreements within OPEC, said James L. Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics in London, Arkansas.
“A two-rig count is not significant one way or another. That could just be somebody moving rigs.”
Brent crude futures fell 76 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $49.71 a barrel. It hit a session low of $49.31.
US West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.02, or 2 percent, to $48.70 a barrel. It hit a low of $48.42. The benchmarks showed a weekly drop of about 4 percent, the biggest since mid-September.
Oil prices had slipped further on news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation found additional e-mails relating to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s past use of a personal server for her work as US secretary of state. The US stock market reversed gains.
A falling dollar, which makes crude priced in greenbacks cheaper for holders of other currencies, later pared losses, but news of division at OPEC’s Vienna meeting kept prices in the negative.
“Iraq and Iran are disputing OPEC’s production numbers,” Phil Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago, said of OPEC’s baseline for setting output quotas.
“My feeling on the OPEC situation is that it’s not going to be easy.”
A general view shows a Tate & Lyle refinery in east London, Britain. (Reuters)
