Oil prices, on Wednesday, December 14, dipped after data showed U.S. crude stockpiles soared last week and Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, stressed it will need help from non-member producers to reduce a supply glut.
February Brent crude LCOG7, -1.08% dropped 72 cents, or 1.3%, to $55 a barrel on Wednesday. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in January CLF7, -1.40% slid 78 cents, or 1.5%, to $52.20 a barrel, after settling at the highest level since July 2015 on Tuesday.
Futures started the day negative territory after the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said late Tuesday its data for the week ended Dec. 9 showed a 4.7 million-barrel increase in crude supplies, a 3.9 million-barrel rise in gasoline stocks, and a 230,000-barrel increase in distillate inventories.
Oil prices stayed lower after the monthly report from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries showed its collective output climbed to 33.87 million barrels a day in November.
The number implies, that to meet its agreed output target of 32.5 million barrels a day from Jan. 1, it will have to cut more than the 1.2 million a day it originally planned for.
The group also said that it is necessary for oil producers outside the cartel to stick their pledge to reduce their supplies by 558,000 barrels a day to balance the struggling oil market.
If both sides adhere to their promises, it “will accelerate the reduction of global inventories and bring forward the rebalancing of the oil market to the second half of 2017,” OPEC said in its report.
The International Energy Agency in a report on Tuesday struck a more optimistic tone, saying demand would start to outstrip supply already in the first half of the year.
